Theatre review: King Lear (Almeida)

Given that it doesn't look like Yaël Farber’s going anywhere anytime soon, I feel like Rupert Goold's Almeida has really found the right match for the highly ritualistic South African director, by sticking to those Shakespeare plays where an apparent complete absence of a sense of humour isn't a major obstacle. So after her Macbeth we now get a nearly four-hour long King Lear that despite being a particularly nihilistic take on the play is easily the best work I've ever seen Farber do. Regular readers of this blog may both decide for themselves how much of a compliment that actually is - but I'd say it's also one of the better Lears I've seen in general. We begin at a live TV broadcast by the Royal Family where the succession is to be formally announced. Lear (Danny Sapani) asks his three daughters how much they love him, and the eldest two go along with the ritual, singing his praises.

But the youngest refuses to flatter him, and in a rage he banishes her. As she was the most sympathetic to him, this means all his power has been devolved to the more pragmatic, ruthless daughters, and this has consequences both on a family and nationwide level.

While logically it's hard to argue with their stance (I've said it before and I'll say it again, there's nothing unreasonable about thinking a man prone to sudden fits of violence and unpredictability shouldn't have access to his own private army) Shakespeare is clearly on Lear's side with them painted as the wicked sisters, but Farber seems particularly sympathetic to Goneril (Akiya Henry) and Regan (Faith Omole) right from the start. There's a school of thought that Cordelia's (Gloria Obianyo) refusal to flatter is actually quite a brattish, attention-seeking move, an attempt to remind everyone she's the special favourite one that badly backfires.

That's what it feels like as the announcement that the succession will be decided by speeches of love is met with no surprise by anyone, evidently a traditional ritual that Lear, Goneril and Regan go through the motions with, but Cordelia sabotages for no reason. Sapani plays Lear's early-onset dementia from the start, and it's never quite gone even in his moment of clarity at the end. We never really know what kind of king he was before we meet him, because he's already the kind of person whose mental collapse includes sudden bouts of verbal and physical cruelty.

With Henry and Omole showing Sapani affection until his violent fits finally become too much to handle, it's hard to argue with them saying Lear gave power to them just in time, even if them ultimately sending him out to face the elements is... possibly not what most mental health professionals would recommend. In that context the unwavering loyalty shown to Lear by Kent (Alec Newman,) Gloucester (Michael Gould) and Albany (Geoffrey Lumb) seems foolish, men clinging on to the hereditary patriarchy even as its figurehead falls apart. While I wouldn’t say Oswald (Hugo Bolton,) the oleaginous servant who can almost be a panto villain in some productions, comes off as positive here, he’s a bit more neutral: His dedication to the “bad guys” is hardly a surprise given how relentlessly he’s bullied by the “good guys” from the start.

In general I’d say this production gives the supposed heroes pretty short shrift: Edgar can be hopelessly naïve about his brother at the best of times, but Farber has Matthew Tennyson actually on stage as Fra Fee’s Edmund delivers his plans to take down his family, and he still fails to smell a rat. In all this it falls to Clarke Peters’ Fool to provide the heart and soul of the production, and the relationship between Sapani and Peters is very clearly drawn: This isn’t a paid Fool with license to call out the mighty, but Lear’s oldest and closest friend who can speak to him as an equal because that’s just how they’ve always spoken to each other. It’s the most genuinely affectionate relationship in the show and Farber slightly expands the role to a quasi-narrator figure, even bringing him back at the end so that his presence brings a calming energy as things start to right themselves again.

But of course before that the Fool famously disappears for much of the play, and things really get thrown into chaos. Here almost everyone seems to get portrayed as downright mad, with the turning point being an expressionistic storm scene featuring characters running around trailing clear plastic sheets, or crashing through the metal beaded curtains that surround Merle Hensel’s set. I guess this makes it a bit easier to play the elder sisters more sympathetically, as the sudden lurch into Regan in particular going on a bloodthirsty rampage, and both of them getting distracted from a French invasion by fighting over who gets to shag Edmund, here fits into a more general feel of the nation and everyone in it collapsing into tempestuous, apocalyptic insanity. This is a space that lends itself to an intimate interpretation which feels literal in the first half, while for all the bells and whistles of the second it seems like the fall of the kingdom really is just the fall of these people within it.

I’m not known for being patient with over-long running times unless they’re very well-justified, and one of the reasons I’ve never really warmed to Farber’s work is that it often feels like the epic length is there for no reason other than to inflate its own sense of an event. But while I’m sure there could have been a few more cuts here with much the same overall effect – while there’s nowhere near as much despairing wailing as in your average Yaël Farber show I could still have gone without what we got - I can’t say that the hefty running time was something I ever felt (other than from my bladder or wondering if I’d get home before midnight.) The overall bleakness meant I didn’t find this the most emotionally affecting of Lears, and costume designer Camilla Dely’s fondness for unflattering grey Y-fronts is… a choice, but this went from something of a gamble for me to something I was very glad to have caught. (Also props to Lee Curran’s lighting; I know it’s a relatively small space but I’ve still never actually seen the white hair Regan plucks out of Gloucester’s beard held up in such sharp focus before.)

King Lear by William Shakespeare is booking until the 30th of March at the Almeida Theatre (returns only.)

Running time: 3 hours 45 minutes including interval (interval after 2 hours 5 minutes so pee accordingly.)

Photo credit: Marc Brenner.