Theatre in Review: King Lear (The Shed)

	Kenneth Branagh. Photo: Marc J. Franklin

This may be the most lucid and fast-moving King Lear you will ever see; this sounds like praise, and it is, up to a point. Thanks in part to the adoption of a Dolby Atmos system (a theatre first) by the sound designers Ben and Max Ringham, not a word of the text is lost; at the same time, the actors' voices sound entirely natural, not subject to the sometimes-displacing effects of overamplification. Of course, it helps that everyone onstage speaks William Shakespeare's verse fluently, catching the rhythm of the words and delivering their meaning with authority. Compare this company's performance with the halting line readings to be heard at Circle in the Square Theatre, where Romeo + Juliet is playing. It's no contest; Lear's court wins by a mile.

And because the production -- which, rather bewilderingly, has three directors: Rob Ashford, Kenneth Branagh, and Lucy Skilbeck -- moves so purposefully and at such a rattling pace, one can appreciate the play's elegant bones based on twin narratives involving fathers overthrown by treacherous children. We also get a sense of forces converging on the world, driving it into a state of collapse. As Gloucester notes, "These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend/no good to us: though the wisdom of nature can/Reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds itself/Scourged by the sequent effects: love cools/Friendship falls off, brothers divide: in/Cities, mutinies; in countries, discord; in/palaces, treason; and the bond cracked 'twixt son and father." With thoughts like that, is there any question Lear is a play for this fraught moment? When the good duke later says, "'Tis the times' plague, when madmen lead the blind," the words are greeted by the audience with a moan of dismayed recognition.

The evening begins on an exciting note when the circular scenic piece angled over the stage rises to reveal Lear in a shaft of light. (Jon Bausor's set is very Stonehenge, the stage backed by stone monoliths that shift position from scene to scene.) Branagh's Lear is strikingly different from the choleric cases of early-onset dementia we've seen in recent years: He's notably young, remarkably vigorous, and seemingly in full possession of the faculties. There's something almost jaunty about how he wields a giant stick, tracing the outlines of his subdivided kingdom for the world to see; he is rather like a modern-day CEO, looking forward to a luxurious retirement. But his Achilles' heel is his sense of entitlement; he cannot believe that he isn't universally loved -- that only his position commands respect -- and when Regan and Goneril begin stripping him of his privileges, his cognitive dissonance is psychologically destructive. His slide into madness is cued when -- checkmated by the daughters he has just denounced as "unnatural hags" -- he falls to the ground, groaning in agony, the apparent victim of a stroke.

But even as I found myself nodding in approval at the choices made, I couldn't help wondering why I wasn't more engaged, especially during the first half, which is often surprisingly dull. In prioritizing speed and efficiency -- the stage is packed with people going about their often-ruthless business with a rare sense of purpose -- Lear's essence sometimes gets trampled in all the bustle. Any production using the full text, or something close to it, will run at least three hours; this wraps in two, an economy achieved by many internal textual cuts. But, snipping away so much connective tissue, Branagh and his co-directors have unwittingly cut into the play's nervous system, causing damage that diminishes its power.

The play's acts of savagery -- devastating betrayals, the cruelest denunciations, and appalling acts of violence - are all there but their impacts are blunted in the rush to get to the next plot point. Moving at such an energized pace the characters' motivations are hard to grasp. Exactly what is eating at Regan and Goneril? Why does Gloucester fall so easily for his bastard son Edmund's manipulations? What drives Edgar, Gloucester's cast-off son, to protect himself by pretending to be a mad beggar? Decisions made so rashly seem arbitrary, conceived only to meet the needs of the play.

Under such circumstances, the actors, for all their technical skill, struggle to deliver the ferocious characterizations that Lear needs. This is especially true of the play's cadre of villains. Neither Saffron Coomber nor Deborah Alli -- Regan and Goneril, respectively -- seems certain about what drives them. Dylan Corbett-Bader finds little relish in Edmund's scheming, not even his duplicitous sexual alliances with Lear's daughters. The victims do rather better: Eleanor de Rohan -- a female Kent, for a change -- retains a welcome moral authority, and Joseph Kloska's Gloucester keeps his dignity even when subjected to ghastly torture. Others deliver mixed results: Jessica Revell is effective as the Fool, slyly handing Lear truths that no one else dares utter, but her Cordelia is surprisingly drab and lacking in moral authority. The sense of depersonalization is abetted by Bausor's barbaric, yet colorless, costumes made of fur and layers of rough cloth, and Paul Keogan's lighting, which creates stunning tableaux while neglecting the actors' faces. Nina Dunn's projections, largely consisting of turbulent skies, quickly become monotonous.

In this context, certain strong gestures stand out in sharp relief: Lear, grabbing hold of Cordelia and, in a voice choked with rage and hurt, muttering, "Better thou/Hadst not been born than not t' have pleased me better;" Lear, bashing his head in rage over his daughters' treachery; the sight of loyal Kent, in disguise, trussed up like a common criminal; and Regan's impulsive embrace of her father just before turning on him. The second half is much better: The blinding of Gloucester is gasp-inducing in its brutality. The sight of Lear exiting on all fours, a broken man, is heart-rending, as is his appearance with the dead Cordelia, making wounded animal cries and delivering the play's simplest and most shattering line: "Thou'lt come no more/Never, never, never, never, never!"

Still, for all its virtues, this production never fully engages with the play's dark heart -- its unblinking gaze into a human abyss and its deep appreciation of the social chaos wrought by its characters' selfish, power-grabbing moves. This staging has a style but no appreciable point of view. The painfully sharp edges have been sanded off, reducing one of the greatest plays ever written to a solid, uninspiring, star vehicle. That's not the Lear this moment needs. --David Barbour