This week I saw King Lear and Cymbeline. Huge, long, meandering plays. In London, 2016. Cymbeline is the play with endless endings. King Lear is the play with endless middle scenes. Both have mystical elements as well as very earthy elements of; lust, death, power, family squabbles, tragedy and comedy.
I think that the division of Shakespeare’s plays into either a tragedy, or history, or comedy starts the theatre community with a fallacy. It has long been my approach that the plays of Shakespeare are possibly all tragi-comedies.
Naturally some of the plats lean more towards tragedy and others towards comedy and some more towards history. Face facts: even the tragedies have clowns or fools and jokes; even the comedies have very serious fights and quarrels. History plays such as Henry V have quite a few clowns such as Mistress Quickly, Bardolph, Pistol, Nym and yes I have a particular overview that would even add Fluellen as a ‘clown’ in that play.
My basic premise to finding a key into any of Shakespeare’s plays is to consider the named protagonist as the head of the play. However, one has to think laterally to find the heart of the play, that is, the clown.
In a play such as King Lear with the fool by his side it is rather simple to follow my suggestion. With a play such as Antony & Cleopatra (two named protagonists) one has to think out of the box. Antony is the head and Cleopatra is the heart and clown. She is a clown because she “Does what she wants, when she wants, however she wants”. Similarly with Romeo & Juliet though some would say The Nurse is the clown. She is a clown but she is not the heart of the play, Juliet is. She is wild, firey, stropping, pouting as any 14 year old Italian girl might be.
Now I come to this week’s viewings.
Suffice to say I enjoyed seeing both productions even though they have their weaknesses.
Generally if I intend to see a play or production (circus, dance, etc) I will not read a review beforehand. However, if I am not sure whether to see a production then I may sneak a peek at a review or several to see if I want to invest my time and money. I learned long ago that if someone in the profession, including critics said “Don’t bother” I would try to go that night instead of buying into another person’s tastes. Thus I found that theatre practitioners and critics are amongst the most unreliable of tastes as they view through a variety of tinted glasses.
Below you will see a review that I only read this morning, after I had seen the show last night.
A friend asked me this morning what I thought of the King Lear production. Here is the reply:
The King and The Fool. An ideal couple and an ideal interpretation. An. One of infinite possibilities. That is what they chose this time with this director. There were highlights. There were illuminations of the text. This was due to the director and designer’s staging and concept. In particular their spacing. I.S.A.A.C.’s central training is The Four Ariculations for Performance. The ‘four’ refers to; body, space, time, and time-space continuum. Oe of the fine elements of this King Lear was the director and designer’s use of space to illuminate the text.
Loved every moment of Glenda Jackson as King Lear. Loved the staging’s illumination of the text …. That occurred primarily when Glenda was on stage. Loved the quirkey ecclectic design. Kent was excellent. Fool was excellent. Regan was pretty good, certainly a fab character interpretation. Edmund too was quite interesting an interpretation. Most of the 2nd half of the show was way too slow. The play is a director’s nightmare in a way. I see that the first half of the show likely Act 1 – 3 needs methodical taking of ones time whereas the last two acts have to move at-a-pace. Quite up tempo so that before we notice the ritual of play has ended, rather than meandering slowly as it did trying to make some belaboured obvious point. I am SO glad I saw it, saw GLENDA, Fool, Kent, the staging. I am ‘researching’, studying, contemplating ‘What is Shakespeare’? I think it is ritual theatre first and foremost. A ritual of human drama and the subconscious. It is the perfect mix of Freud and Jung.
I will finish this blog some day.
Here is one reviewer’s observations and biases. https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/nov/05/king-lear-review-glenda-jackson-old-vic