King Lear ***
Theatrical wunderkind Rupert Goold has been busy. His restaging of Oliver! has just opened, and now his take on Shakespeare’s famous tragedy, with Pete Postlethwaite in the title role, arrives in London after a sell-out - but critically knocked - run in Liverpool.
Postlethwaite plays the abdicating king as a flat-capped everyman in brown trousers – he could be anyone’s irascible father as he disowns his youngest daughter Cordelia when she refuses to overstate her love for him. There’s little sense of a great ruler’s fall from power and, as a result, it isn’t until Lear’s senses desert him that Postlethwaite comes into his own, emaciated and fragile in a flowery dress and belatedly wielding a broken parasol against a storm which has already passed and wrought its damage.
Played out on a flight of stone steps sprouting weeds of neglect, Goold’s production (which he places in the late 70’s) emphasises the fragmentation of Britain as well as the schisms between fathers, offspring and jealous siblings. The faces of Lear’s followers are painted, like football fans, with the red cross of St George; Forbes Masson’s sombre Fool is a Scot, and Goneril’s scorned spouse speaks with a heavy Irish accent, as does Jonjo O’Neill’s Edmund, the scheming bastard son of the Earl of Gloucester whom John Shrapnel plays with an authority which withstands his stomach -churning mutilation at the hands of Regan (who sadistically uses her teeth to sever his eye).
But despite the overall narrative clarity, the directorial touches sometimes seem gratuitous and, ultimately, the production lacks the overarching vision which has characterised Goold’s best – and most exciting – work.
Young Vic, The Cut, SE1 (0207 922 2922) Until 28th March (Tickets £22.50)
Postlethwaite plays the abdicating king as a flat-capped everyman in brown trousers – he could be anyone’s irascible father as he disowns his youngest daughter Cordelia when she refuses to overstate her love for him. There’s little sense of a great ruler’s fall from power and, as a result, it isn’t until Lear’s senses desert him that Postlethwaite comes into his own, emaciated and fragile in a flowery dress and belatedly wielding a broken parasol against a storm which has already passed and wrought its damage.
Played out on a flight of stone steps sprouting weeds of neglect, Goold’s production (which he places in the late 70’s) emphasises the fragmentation of Britain as well as the schisms between fathers, offspring and jealous siblings. The faces of Lear’s followers are painted, like football fans, with the red cross of St George; Forbes Masson’s sombre Fool is a Scot, and Goneril’s scorned spouse speaks with a heavy Irish accent, as does Jonjo O’Neill’s Edmund, the scheming bastard son of the Earl of Gloucester whom John Shrapnel plays with an authority which withstands his stomach -churning mutilation at the hands of Regan (who sadistically uses her teeth to sever his eye).
But despite the overall narrative clarity, the directorial touches sometimes seem gratuitous and, ultimately, the production lacks the overarching vision which has characterised Goold’s best – and most exciting – work.
Young Vic, The Cut, SE1 (0207 922 2922) Until 28th March (Tickets £22.50)
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