On Sunday Lee and I and a bunch of other people saw King Lear performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the St James.
It was long, obviously the RSC are not big editors of the Bard's prose, and it was depressing, because more than the other famous Tragedies Lear is about a lot of people just being awful to each other. There are very few purely good characters and of course the ending is all death all the time.
I've read that people were disappointed with Sir Ian's performance, but I thought he was astounding - completely inhabiting the role of Lear with all the arrogance and flaws and regret and madness and fear. His delivery of "let me not be mad" nearly took my breath away.
The daughters were very good; Goneril was ice-queen extraordinarily cold and unreachable. Utterly majestic and sure of herself. Regan was rather terrifying; a lush always with a glass of wine in her hand who laughed at her husband's cruelty, although she had a strange way of delivering the prose, unusual uses of pauses.
Cordelia was very beautiful and I nearly died with envy over her white dress at the start but I found her performance very wet. But then the character is very wet...also she seemed to throw herself on the floor a lot, or walk bent at the waist for some reason. Still I did cry when she died, but that was likely because of the force of the despair Sir Ian was projecting.
Overall the production was exceptionally beautiful, slick and perfect as you would expect and I enjoyed it greatly. The torture of Kent wasn't as horrible to watch as it could have been, but they showed the hanging of the fool on stage and I didn't like that at all.
(Although it was the last thing to happen before the intermission and the woman sitting behind us [who kept kicking Lee in the head when she shifted around] turned to her husband and said 'it wasn't very nice of them to hang him!' and I had to laugh. I'm not sure what play she thought she was seeing?)
Edgar and Edmund were both fantastic, Edgar's transformation from geeky brother to madman to triumphant hero was absolutely believable. Edmund was wonderfully charismatic, sly and evil and the best kind of Shakespearean villain.
I liked the fool too, although it was sometimes hard to make out what he was saying. He really got the dry 'telling it like it is' lines and made them cutting. He also played the spoons.
So yeah. I enjoyed the play and I'd see the RSC if they ever come back.
PoF: bear ear hoody
CO: weekend tomorrow