King Lear’s struggle with insanity makes for one of Shakespeare’s most dramatic tragedies. Bard On the Beach tackles the serious play with an extensive cast on the BMO main stage. Lovers of King Lear know that it is a long play and a challenging one at that. It needs a strong cast and some thread of innovation to keep impatient audiences, like me, engaged. Bard’s production is hard-hitting and stays true to the heaviness of the original work. Although not one of my favourites, I was still very curious to see what creative decisions Bard would take on to make King Lear extra captivating. Plus something about a king brought down by two opinionated (and supposedly malicious, but whatever!) women sparked my interest. I wanted to see this done! And on the Bard stage no less.
The play opens with the King at the dinner table with his three daughters, asking them how much they love him so that he can divvy up his estates accordingly. The King is sabotaged by two of his daughters, Goneril and Regan, who attempt to slowly strip away his power and accuse him of insanity. The poor, vain guy finds himself blown about on the winds of his madness, from daughter to daughter, and into the eye of a storm on a heath. Parallel to the King’s story is the story of the King’s friend Gloucester, who is also deceived by his son Edmund. Edmund gets involved with the sabotage of King Lear and events unfold tragically to gruesome ends. This play truly is an out and out exploration of tragedy. No room is there here for any lightheartedness. The reigning emotions are despair and anger.
Bard’s presentation of King Lear is traditional. The set and costumes accurately evoke the play’s medieval setting. The set is large and functional. Nothing is decorative. The large banquet table, the stock that the Earl of Kent gets tied to, the stairs and platform that frame the stage, these are all large-scale, grim, wooden structures. The props are minimal and when they do appear they are major structures. They reflect the grand nature of the characters involved- the larger than life statures of royalty. In the play Shakespeare explores the dangerous powers that rulers have and what becomes of their kingdoms when the rulers make errors or lose their minds. The grimness and grandness of the subject is thus accurately portrayed in the stark physical framework of the play.
The costumes in Bard’s King Lear are staunch and beautiful. They are befitting of royalty. Costume Designer Deitra Kalyn outdoes herself with fabrics printed with the most luscious of patterns. The three sisters don beautiful gowns that not only look feminine but also structurally help carry the actresses in an upright, regal manner. Kalyn dresses the young men and the older kings just as appropriately. She gives them tunics in informal settings and belts, furs and capes, in formal ones. Her input to the accuracy of the depiction of the play is tremendous. The fights are another highlight. They are expertly done and thrilling to the bone. The sonorous clashes of the swordfights are so rhythmic they are almost pieces of music. While the fighting is so well mapped out that it is almost like a dance. It makes the heart race.
The star of any production of King Lear has to be the cast. It is a character-driven play full of monologues and conflicts. Bard’s cast is large and does justice to the play’s sentiments. Benedict Campbell as King Lear is powerful and a great orator. With 38 years of theatre experience behind him, Campbell carries the show on his shoulders. He handles his emotions well. He is a little more chaotic than I pictured King Lear to be. I had always imagined King Lear to be more rigid and kingly. Campbell is softer and cuter. Michael Blake is brilliant as the main villain of the play. He breathes life into Edmund with stylish menace and makes the stage come alive whenever he takes to it. As King Lear’s eldest daughter, Colleen Wheeler turns out an outstanding performance. When she hears her father’s tirade of curses she faces the audience and quietly melts into tears. Her voice is strong at all other times and her anger is vivid. Wheeler takes a supporting character and makes a star out of it. All in all, the cast turns out a fantastic ensemble performance.
King Lear is one of the hardest Shakespearean plays to make exciting because of its grim subject matter and its very specific setting in time. Bard has decided to give the Vancouver audiences a traditional dose of Shakespeare this year through King Lear. This is actually a great offering, seeing as The Comedy of Errors gets a steam-punk reimagining and Love’s Labours Lost has been modified to fulfil a musical format. This King Lear allows audiences to enjoy Shakespeare at his most original. Still, it would have been quite exciting to witness a new take on this classic tragedy. Because the traditional is so familiar to the eye, it becomes a little difficult to stay attentive for the entire run time of almost three hours. I personally felt like it needed a kick of some sort. Perhaps louder and heavier music or more prop and set changes. Lighting variations maybe, even some reworking of the original content might have done it. Some sort of theatrical hot sauce was needed. The cast spoke beautifully but at times their positions and movements were haphazard and chaotic. The actors moved around too much and the movements were not as tight as they should have been. The very core of the production was a little less unified, and left me yearning for more cohesion and structure.
Shakespeare fans know exactly what to expect when they decide to go into a King Lear production and this production will definitely not disappoint them. A glass of wine will ease the impending doom and make it easier to pay attention in the lengthier scenes where the mind tends to wander. I would recommend newcomers to attend the other shows at Bard this year before attempting King Lear, as it might be a laborious endeavour. But I urge the regular theatregoers to go and witness the “Reason in madness!”
Buy your tickets here.
-Prachi Kamble
