Theatre in Review: King Lear (New York Shakespeare Festival/Delacorte Theater)

	Jessica Hecht, John Lithgow, Clarke Peters, Glenn Fleshler. Photo: Joan Marcus

You can say many things about Daniel Sullivan's staging of King Lear, but you can't say that it lacks a sense of purpose. Everyone involved clearly knows what to do, and goes about their business with brisk professionalism. The dialogue is well-spoken, the staging is clean and uncluttered, and, at any given moment, the production's overall intentions are crystal-clear.

And yet the net result is a King Lear that is both overwrought and underfelt, a series of effects lacking any direct connection to the dark heart of Shakespeare's bleakest tragedy. Many terrible things happen in the course of it: A king is destroyed, a way of life is violently upended, and a nation is scarred by war. It features the most gut-wrenching scene of torture in all of dramatic literature and ends with the wanton killing of one of the really innocent people on stage. You may take note of all these things at the Delacorte, but chances are you will feel very little about any of them.

The temptation is strong to lay the blame on Sullivan, given the fact that all three leading performances have gone seriously awry. Even at a time when we are up to our ears in Lears, the prospect of John Lithgow as the mad monarch was particularly enticing. But almost immediately one senses that something is off: He lacks the monarchical stature needed in the early scenes; instead, his Lear is avuncular, chatty, a twinkling greybeard. There is little sense of gravity in his transfer of power to his daughters; he might as well be a suburban patriarch, divvying up the family china.

We quickly get a hint of something more fiery when, enraged by Cordelia's too-honest answer to his request for verbal tribute, Lear hurls at her the piece of chalk he has used to redraw the map of his kingdom. This is the moment of truth, for it turns out that Lithgow's Lear has a fit for every occasion. Furious at Goneril, he overturns a table, and follows up by smacking his forehead repeatedly, crying out, "Lear! Lear! Lear!" The speech beginning "Reason not the need" becomes the jumping-off point for a full-fledged conniption. Each outburst is more operatic than its predecessor. Lithgow seems entirely focused on mapping out a path to madness for Lear, beginning with small acts of petulance and ending in lunacy; it's an intelligent approach, but in this case it's far too calculated. You never lose sight of the actor at work.

Lithgow has some touching moments when, deranged and homeless, he wanders in the wilderness trying to make sense of his fate. But, faced with the death of Cordelia, he turns one of Shakespeare's most devastatingly simple speeches ("Never. Never. Never. Never. Never.") into a self-conscious showpiece, caressing each "never" with a variety of gasps and sobs. One is hard-pressed to forget how, only a few months ago, Frank Langella, barely whispering the words, struck directly at the heart of Lear's annihilating sorrow.

Annette Bening's Goneril holds much promise at first, especially when treating Lear's request for proof of her love like a politician taking a softball question from a hack reporter; she emits a tiny, self-deprecating laugh before offering such fulsome praise that one instantly understands Cordelia's revulsion at her sisters' dishonesty. Bening also brings a cool rationality to the scenes in which Goneril becomes fed up with Lear's carousing ways; for once, you think, the lady has a point. But the performance never attains a deeper sense of evil; this Goneril is sadly deficient in all of the seven deadly sins, especially lust, as seen in her lack of chemistry with the Edmund of Eric Sheffer Stevens.

Jessica Hecht's Regan errs entirely in the other direction. Perhaps bored with her standard repertory of genteel matrons and screwball heroines, she leaps for the jugular with an unseemly lack of control, alternating moments of ladylike behavior with episodes of unintentionally comic fury. She appears to be auditioning for the next season of American Horror Story during the blinding of Gloucester, so avidly does she advertise her bloodlust. (Susan Hilferty, the costume designer, dresses her in white in this scene, allowing her to become thoroughly drenched in red.)

The rest of the cast roams all over the place. Jessica Collins' Cordelia shows an interesting hint of steel underneath her virtuous exterior, but she never really connects emotionally with Lear. Steven Boyer's interestingly conceived Fool is less a joker than an urgent political commentator vitally worried about his master's decline. Jay O. Sanders is a solid, sympathetic presence as Kent, but Clarke Peters' Gloucester could use a stronger element of desolation, especially when robbed of his sight and left to die in the wilderness. Chukwudi Iwuji's Edgar gains in power as he goes along; his assumed identity as the mad Poor Tom is especially well-realized. Jeremy Bobb is a study in understated hauteur as Goneril's steward. But Stevens' Edmund is callow, lacking in charm, and, overall, too transparent in his motivations; it's hard to see how he could hoodwink anyone. (Sullivan does give him a nice moment when, just before baring his malevolent nature to us, he bows to the exiting Goneril and Regan; it's a clever nod to the mayhem to come.) Christopher Innvar and Glenn Fleshler make little impression as Albany and Cornwall.

The production design, which seems to place the action in a pre-Christian Britain ruled by warrior tribes, suggests a brutal universe that is rarely revealed in the performances. John Lee Beatty's set places most of the action on a bare, raised platform backed by a wall covered with a burlap-type fabric shot through with spears. Jeff Croiter's expert lighting, working with an essentially white palette, is all that is needed to repeatedly transform the space, which is why Tal Yarden's projections -- mostly of threatening skies -- seem so fussy and unnecessary. Hilferty's costumes convincingly dress the men in warlike garb and the women in flatteringly simple gowns. The sound system, by Acme Sound Partners, adds to the power of Dan Moses Schreier's original score, which draws heavily on percussive effects to suggest a world sliding into chaos.

It's my experience that the darkness of Lear is so overwhelming that, presented in less-than-authoritative fashion, the audience will fight it, often laughing at the oddest moments. That's what happens here. One reason we've had so many Lears recently is because so many eminent actors have reached the age when the role provides them with one more mountain to climb. But it's also true that the play's depiction of evil running rampant may speak directly to us at this unhappy moment. But that conversation isn't really taking place at the Delacorte these nights. -- David Barbour