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Heaving Heart Into Mouth for McKellen's 'Lear'

by Zoe Strimpel
Thu, 13 Dec 2007 at 3:25 PM

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I was told repeatedly how lucky I was to get a single ticket for the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of "King Lear," starring Ian McKellen. The show, which visited the Brooklyn Academy of Music in September, is fresh from Stratford-Upon-Avon at the New London in Covent Garden and runs in tandem with "The Seagull," also starring Sir Ian in some performances. (He alternates the role of Sorin with William Gaunt.) And indeed I was lucky: Yesterday's show, just a weekday 1 p.m.-er, was packed out.

And what a show — coursing with energy, deliberate and richly acted. Its authority and chilling, heartbreaking power were obvious from the second it opened. An organ sounded loud and rapid notes — a sinister, churchy, and regal tune — as Lear and entourage marched out amid opulent velvet cloaks and curtains and big wooden tables. This is the last time we see Lear in full kingly bearing (though already he is furry-voiced and stooped — a lesser king than he once was).

Straightaway to the speeches — Goneril (normally played by Frances Barber; yesterday by a wonderfully mean-looking Melanie Jessop) and Regan (Monica Dolan) were like beakers of poison, one fair, one dark. Cordelia, played by the fabulous Romola Garai (she was exquisite as Gwendolyn in the BBC's "Daniel Deronda" and is currently seen as the young adult Bryony in "Atonement"), is beautiful and plainspoken. And, refreshingly, noisy and fulsome. She scoffs when asked to speak and emits a few giggles or snorts of disbelief at Lear's reaction to her refusal to heave her "heart into [her] mouth". Comic disbelief soon turns to confident, clear-seeing anger at her sisters as she departs the court with her husband-to-be, the King of France.

And so Lear loses his retinue — sputtering and growling out his words in the way only an RSC great like Sir Ian can. He was alternately furious, infuriating and sweet, but pitiable at all times. Lear's final scene, in which he cradles the dead Cordelia (at last, but too late, every bit the loving father and restorer of heinously distorted family ties), had much of the crowd in tears.

Edmund (Philip Winchester) was a handsome devil who managed to both spit and slide his tongue around his words, as if tasting each one for the first time and trying out how best each could serve his crooked ends. Gloucester (Mr. Gaunt) was excellent as his decent and abused courtly father — the moment his eyes ("vile cherries," according to Cornwall) are gouged out is always one of the hardest of the play, though in this production not quite as gruesome as possible.

Outstanding, too, was Edgar (Ben Meyjes) as the wronged brother and heart-breaking mad Tom persona (for which he rushed around and jibbered naked and blood-smeared for much of the play), as was the banished, deeply loyal Kent (Jonathan Hyde). In fact, few moments in theater can have been so sad or so complex as those on the wild heath, when Lear and his band of ousted, broken followers — the Fool (Sylvester McCoy) is perhaps the saddest and most incomprehensible of them all — shiver and howl through wind and rain.

This is another show that London should be — and is — deeply proud of. The only difficult part is getting in.

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