Althouse: "When you’re younger, Lear doesn’t feel real. When you get to my age, you are Lear in every nerve of your body."

March 27, 2019

"When you’re younger, Lear doesn’t feel real. When you get to my age, you are Lear in every nerve of your body."

Said Laurence Olivier, some years back. He's quoted today in "At 82, Glenda Jackson Commands the Most Powerful Role in Theater/'King Lear' has long been the crowning performance for actors who know how to dominate a stage. As a longstanding member of Parliament, Jackson has unique insight into authority" (NYT).

Remember Glenda Jackson, half a century ago, in "Women in Love"?

Are you excited to see her now, as King Lear? I'd love to see this in the theater. I saw "King Lear" in the theater half a century ago. Playing King Lear was Lee J. Cobb. Remember Lee J. Cobb?

57 comments:

Seeing Red said...: I just started watching Amazon’s adaptation.; 3/27/19, 6:04 PM
Amadeus 48 said...: Saw King Lear about 15 years ago in Stratford with Christopher Plummer when he was 74. Riveting. I hate that play, but you couldn't take your eyes off Plummer. Most Lears are tedious.; 3/27/19, 6:12 PM
Michael K said...: Lee J Cobb was a great actor. Johnny Friendly in"On the Waterfront."; 3/27/19, 6:14 PM
rehajm said...: Highland cattle are generally benevolent creatures but it is dangerous to dance between and betwixt them. The risk is crush death. Lost a few farmers that way.; 3/27/19, 6:17 PM
mockturtle said...: Love Women in Love, the movie more than the book. Especially the uncut version. Oliver Reed full frontal. Wow!; 3/27/19, 6:20 PM
rehajm said...: Young Glenda is like a present day Pollyanna McIntosh.; 3/27/19, 6:20 PM
mockturtle said...: Remember Lee J. Cobb?

Oh, yes! Great actor. Especially good as Johnny Friendly in On the Waterfront.; 3/27/19, 6:22 PM
tcrosse said...: Also, half a century ago, Glenda Jackson honed her Monarch chops in Elizabeth R (1971); 3/27/19, 6:47 PM
John Ray said...: Ann, to answer your question, Yes, I remember Cobb. Always thought of him as very underrated in his profession. Now, what gave me a take aback was Charles Nelson, I didn't know that he was such a natural floor mover. Thanks for the clips.; 3/27/19, 6:51 PM
Howard said...: She was absolutely commanding in the series Elizabeth R with the perfect partner and unrequited lover Robert Hardy as Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester; 3/27/19, 6:53 PM
Rory said...: Tap dancing on the old Glen Campbell show. Three Dog Night joins in toward the end:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UxUrilnJLRI; 3/27/19, 6:58 PM
William said...: Helen Mirren played Prospero in The Tempest. It was okay but borderline gimmicky.......Olivier wasn't that good as Lear. He was perhaps too old and frail to rage against the storm......There used to be a trope where distinguished actresses played Lear's Fool. At the time such casting kind of made sense given the loyalty foolish women extended towards headstrong men,.........Ian McKellen--or his director Trevor Nunes--has the best version, mostly because hIs production had the best Cordelia, namely Romola Garai. Cordelia doesn't have the great lines and, except for one scene, doesn't even get to play off the great lines. It's not a role great actresses compete for, but it's nonetheless the most important feminine role in the play. She's the unmoved mover, the pivot point upon which all of Lear's action revolve. Misercordia. She's God's mercy, present and distant, abundant and measured. It's very hard to have a stage presence that embodies God's mercy but Romola Garai did it.....I think it's easier for a woman to represent God's mercy and for a man to enact humanity's need for God's mercy, but I'm old and no longer understand the workings of the world.; 3/27/19, 7:05 PM
Quaestor said...: I have grown to despise the theater. I used to love it, especially opera, but now I avoid it. The seething disgust that roils my innards is just intolerable. Back in 2007, I made the pilgrimage to Bayreuth for the Ring festival. Their Das Rheingold was an atrocity, not only were a few of the singers not quite up to their roles (could have been a bad night, every show has them) but the whole production design was literally garbage. Instead of a mythic fantasy world of gods, monsters, and doomed heroes what I saw was a bunch of overweight street people dressed in filthy castoffs milling aimlessly about amidst urban refuse. To get anything pleasant out of the experience I had to sit there in my cheap seat (cheap, fuck me, the whole Cycle costs slightly less than €150 per opera!) with my eyes closed trying to imagine a world I am no part of, that never did or could exist, which is the appeal of epic fantasy. I can see and even interact with unwashed derelicts any time for free, they're part of my world, unfortunately. I go to the opera to escape the grunge, not wallow in it. Wagner intended the Ring experience to be dreamlike and went to great pains to document his ideas for the Festival Theater in a manner realizable by a gifted architect, but the way Das Rheingold was presented negated that intention entirely. In the words of Fielding Mellish, it was a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham.

So there I am, sitting in the Festspielhaus, with my eyes shut. I could have been at home sitting in front of my audio gear with my eyes shut for a very substantial wad less. But, no, I had to buy the whole fucking Ring Cycle. The next night was Die Walküre, and it was if anything worse than the first part. More eye wide shut imaginings.

Next afternoon I went to the ticket agency to ditch my remaining tickets. I'd already been subjected to eight hours of that crap and I was not looking forward to eight more. In order to avoid a scene where Quaestor, the Ugly American, demands his money back like Big Jim McBob and Billy Sol Hurok, (That magic fire didn't blow up real good at all!) I lied. I told the fraulein I had a family emergency which demanded my immediate departure for America. I was told the Festspielhaus was fully prepared for such a situation. So, I got a half-price voucher for a future season. And no money. Shit.

Long story short, I ain't gonna watch Glenda Jackson do a Jacques Derrida number on King Lear for three reasons.

1) It's King Lear, goddammit, not Queen Lear, and it's not a drag role. Lear is "every inch a king", which includes the naughty bits.

2) From the production stills, it's another deconstructionist assault on Western Civilization. Rags, junk, and filth. No thank you. I've had enough.

3) Jackson is an unrepentant Stalinist whore who sat in Commons with Michael fucking Foote having a grand old time trying to shout down Maggie Thatcher as she went about the epic task of drawing English back from the brink of collapse, which spoiled Jackson's dreams of Marxist revolution quite handily. There's no sane reason to feather her nest with my hard-earned.; 3/27/19, 7:16 PM
stephen cooper said...: Glenda Jackson, at 80, could not plausibly have a daughter Cordelia's age.

Olivier at 80 could have a daughter that age.

But any good performance of Shakespeare is exciting, I guess.; 3/27/19, 7:16 PM
wild chicken said...: BBC did all 37 plays back in the 70s. Cheap productions but good actors, people who could really speak.

Everybody mumbles now.; 3/27/19, 7:20 PM
Paco Wové said...: Tap dancing is just weird.; 3/27/19, 7:23 PM
madAsHell said...: When is the comment experiment over??; 3/27/19, 7:26 PM
Ken B said...: No. No interest in seeing this. It will be woke. It won’t be just Lear, it will be smash the patriarchy Lear. Not interested in seeing Albert Finney as Medea either should that ever happen.; 3/27/19, 7:29 PM
Hagar said...: Saw Hamlet once with an elderly and quite hippy British Dame as Hamlet. Very strange.; 3/27/19, 7:37 PM
Stu Grimshaw said...: I love the J in Lee J Cobb. Was it added because there was another Lee Cobb in the SAG registry, or did he add it to turn an unremarkable 2-syllable name into something memorable?; 3/27/19, 7:43 PM
Laslo Spatula said...: Glenda Jackson, Oliver Reed and Ken Russell: some wonderfully oblong movies.

Unfortunately, Glenda was not able to participate in Russell's 2007 short film "Ein Kitten für Hitler" (A Kitten for Hitler).

From Wiki:

"Russell created it intending to be offensive. This caused casting problems, so he decided to cast an adult with dwarfism instead of a young child for the lead role. Russell thus cast Rusty Goffe, who played an Oompa-Loompa in the 1971 film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, to play the lead role of Lenny, an American Jewish boy who aims to inspire a change of heart in Hitler..."

"Following a discussion about film censorship with British broadcaster Melvyn Bragg while they worked on The South Bank Show,[3] Bragg challenged Russell to create a film which Russell himself would want banned.[4] The result was A Kitten for Hitler.[5] After Russell sent Bragg an initial draft, Bragg responded, "Ken, if ever you make this film and it is shown, you will be lynched."[3]..."

Sorry, but I HAVE to include the plot description in its entirety:

"In the winter of 1941, a Jewish woman and her young son, Lenny, are watching a newsreel at a Brooklyn movie theater. A reel featuring Adolf Hitler appears on screen, sparking loud disapproval from the audience. Lenny asks his mother why no one likes Hitler, and his mother explains Hitler's atrocities. Lenny wonders aloud what Santa Claus will give him for Christmas, but his mother replies Hitler won't get anything for Christmas.

This prompts Lenny to travel alone to Germany to give Hitler a kitten for Christmas, hoping it will soften Hitler's heart and make him reconsider his actions. Upon Lenny's arrival, he presents the boxed gift to Hitler, who fears it's a bomb, and tosses it to his mistress, Eva Braun. She opens it to discover a kitten, which she gives to Hitler, who is moved to tears. As Hitler embraces his gift, his mood changes when Lenny reveals he has a swastika-shaped birthmark on his stomach, and Hitler notices his star of David necklace. Horrified and infuriated, Hitler has Eva slaughter Lenny, who skins the boy's corpse to fashion a lampshade made of his hide, which they display on their bedside table lamp, using Lenny's necklace as a switch.

Following the war, the lamp is returned to the Lenny's mother, who keeps it as part of a shrine honoring Lenny. When her hand makes contact with the surface of the shade, the lamp lights up, and by what appears to be an act of God, the swastika transforms into a Star of David. She proclaims this to be a miracle of God, and soon, she, holding the lamp, stands before president Harry S. Truman, who awards the Purple Heart to the lampshade."

A long way around to say: Lear, sure, but Glenda Jackson would've made a GREAT Hitler.

I am now an award-winning film-maker, so I understand this shit.

I am Laslo.; 3/27/19, 7:51 PM
Trumpit said...: Five tremendous actors, singers, dancers, etc. that have sadly left us. The government spends billions on weapons of death favored by right-wingers. Little is spent on scientific research to prevent & cure disease, and on improving the health of the citizenry so that people can live longer in good health. It is a crime against humanity perpetrated by Trump and the GOP. The giant pharmaceutical companies are part of the problem with very expensive basic drugs that are cheaper in other countries compared to the U.S.; 3/27/19, 7:58 PM
readering said...: Never seen Lear on stage. Greatest Shakespearean actor I've seen on stage is Ian McKellen. Saw him as Richard II and Richard III. I notice there is a filmed version of his Lear, so I guess I'll have to get that. ("Garner" seems out of place in that context.); 3/27/19, 8:03 PM
LYNNDH said...: Bubby was a long time hoofer. Did Vaudeville I think. He had a dance called the "Rubber Dance" where he was very limber. Most think of him as the Dad in Beverly Hillbillies.; 3/27/19, 8:22 PM
iowan2 said...: Scarlet Johansson caught seven kinds of hell because she accepted the part of playing a transgender. She was forced to leave the project.

Why can a woman play a male role?

Asking for a friend; 3/27/19, 8:22 PM
whitney said...: Do people still get excited about this gender bender stuff. It's so tedious to me now. And actually it's not gender bender it's just women wanting to get into men spaces. Men are actually fine with women having their own spaces.; 3/27/19, 8:28 PM
Jaq said...: I just saw the new King Lear with Anthony Hopkins included with Prime. It was great. You do need to know the story though because some of the stuff seems to be implied. Why are they fighting and burning cities, etc. Either you had to know the play to watch it, or I missed more than one key piece of dialog. I think that’s why it only got three stars. Anthony Hopkins of course was great.

I would be open to watching her version.

Today I was watching (I have been sick in bed a. lot this week) the Shakespeare Conspiracy and they made a whole show that made what looked like a plausible case that Shakespeare didn’t write his plays. Of course he did, there is almost zero doubt of that, but it reminded me of Maddow’s show. If you ignore enough facts, and misrepresent a few, you can “prove” just about anything.; 3/27/19, 8:28 PM
Lyle Sanford, RMT said...: Thanks for the Glenda clip - it hit me like some of the Dylan quotes you put up - all of a sudden I'm briefly the same person I was 40 or 50 years ago, when I first encountered them.; 3/27/19, 8:32 PM
bonkti said...: My daughter gave me tickets to this past Saturday night's show. Living in my bubble, I had no idea Glenda Jackson was in the show until Friday. My low curiosity/ enthusiasm was the product of having seen an RSC production three years ago and, while I love to read the play, I can get excited only so much for such complete devastation.

When I saw the cast it took me some moments to realize the handsome beauty of Sunday, Bloody Sunday had aged out past any role other than Lear. My excitement at seeing a hugely talented former crush was tempered by ambivalence about gender bending productions.

But she is 82. That is what Lear ought to be but, realistically, cannot be. So I thought.

She radiates an arrogant frailty that is perfect for the role, and manages to chew every bit of nourishment from the bones of this most sublime tragedy over the course of three and a half hours. She's skin and bones herself and all of five foot one, but she commands the stage, every inch a king. I mean, she's built like Ruth Bader Ginsburg but projects like the late Peter O'Toole on his best day, perfect in expression and timing.

It is an extraordinary production. Ruth Wilson is a first date complement as the rough edged Fool and Cordelia. But Jackson's Lear is the best performance by an actor I've seen.; 3/27/19, 8:40 PM
mockturtle said...: Quaestor, you're so cute when you're angry. ;-); 3/27/19, 8:40 PM
Rick.T. said...: Most of you are probably aware that Buddy Ebsen was supposed to be the Tin Woodman but maybe not that the ruby slippers in the movie were silver ones in the book.

https://oz.fandom.com/wiki/Buddy_Ebsen; 3/27/19, 8:48 PM
stephen cooper said...: wild chicken - felicity kendall as rosalind was great - although I saw that in reruns in the 80s; 3/27/19, 8:58 PM
Bill Peschel said...: Laslo, "A Kitten for Hitler" would make a great double feature with the late Jerry Lewis' "The Day the Clown Cried."

Or maybe "Life is Beautiful."; 3/27/19, 9:04 PM
Nichevo said...: Remember Glenda Jackson, half a century ago, in "Women in Love"?

Ah, Glenda Jackson. You gotta hand it to the Brits, they don't insist that their actresses be pretty like we do.; 3/27/19, 9:06 PM
rcocean said...: Quaestor - thanks for the great comment!

I have trouble placing Glenda Jackson. She's one of those old Actresses from the 70s that were in movies I never saw. I get her confused with Maggie Smith, Lyn Redgrave, and Julie Christie. I can't imagine her being a good, King Lear -like Orson Welles or Larry Olivier, but you have to admire her pluck.; 3/27/19, 9:29 PM
Lydia said...: Lee J. Cobb was born Leo Jacoby. Clever the way he changed it.; 3/27/19, 9:54 PM
rhhardin said...: King Lear is about the avoidance of love. Nobody gets married, so it's a tragedy.; 3/27/19, 9:56 PM
Rob said...: Bless you, Laslo. And all eight minutes of "A Kitten for Hitler" are on YouTube.; 3/27/19, 10:13 PM
traditionalguy said...: @ Amadeus48....We also saw Christopher Plummer's King Lear troup from Stratford festival in a two week engagement of thir performance at Lincoln Center in 2004. It stunned the NYC elites.

The Stratford Festival Has a 60 year record of staging better plays than Broadway. Shakespeare is perfect there as are Broadway musicals, famous 20th Century plays and ancient Greek plays. If you don't believe me, go see for yourself. Stratford, Ontario is a special place in a rural setting, about a three hour drive from Detroit, or Buffalo or Toronto. Very artsy people are there every summer.; 3/27/19, 10:13 PM
Jay Vogt said...: Lee J. Cobb was wonderful, but I get he and Jason Roberds (equally great) mixed up in my memory.; 3/27/19, 10:19 PM
exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...: I was disappointed in Anthony Hopkins' Lear. I'd like to see Jackson's interpretation.

I saw Paul Scofield play Othello in London in the early '80's and he was underwhelming as well. (Now there's something that used to be a rite of passage for white Shakespearean actors that you won't see in this day and age - putting on blackface to play Othello. Olivier's Othello was considered daring in 1965 because he actually got made up as a sub-Saharan African, not a prettily suntanned Moor. Now it's considered terribly racist.); 3/27/19, 10:35 PM
readering said...: Boy I wish they did variety shows like Dino's. So much fun.

On a related YouTube note. Been watching videos of top 30 songs of the year. Interesting how black acts increase over the years until 1964 when POP British invasion led by a slew of Beatles hits. But Dino is in there.; 3/27/19, 10:57 PM
Joe said...: Quaestor - I was heavily involved in theater in college. I acted in plays, directed plays, watched plays. Somewhere after college, I gained a loathing for theater. I don't remember the circumstances, but it just grew too pretentious for me. One of the last piles of crap I went to was Cats.

I liked Olivier when young, but grew quite tired of his over-the-top shtick as I aged. Meryl Streep is the same way; never letting you forget that They Are Great Actors!; 3/27/19, 11:21 PM
Kirk Parker said...: mockturtle,

"Quaestor, you're so cute when you're angry. ;-)"

He's right to be angry; damn fools gleefully burning down the building we all live in...; 3/28/19, 12:56 AM
Mark Daniels said...: My favorite performance by Lee J. Cobb was Juror #3 in 'Twelve Angry Men.'; 3/28/19, 1:24 AM
FleetUSA said...: I too saw Lee J Cobb as Lear in NYC. I think it was in late 1970 or early 1971. Fantastic.; 3/28/19, 4:37 AM
Jaq said...: Little is spent on scientific research to prevent & cure disease, and on improving the health of the citizenry so that people can live longer in good health.

Yeah, that’s what the problem is, we don’t spend enough...

It is a crime against humanity perpetrated by Trump and the GOP.

You be you kid.; 3/28/19, 6:25 AM
michaele said...: I thoroughly enjoyed the tap dancing clip and the good naturedness of that kind of humor. Made me smile the whole way through...nice way to start my day.; 3/28/19, 7:01 AM
Quaestor said...: I'm always cute... (grumble, grumble); 3/28/19, 7:10 AM
Quaestor said...: My favorite performance by Lee J. Cobb was Juror #3 in 'Twelve Angry Men.'

That was a good one. But you should see him in the role of a Chinese warlord in The Left Hand of God (1955). On the whole, the film is just so-so, but it really shines for about 20 minutes when Cobb's character shows up — and he's against Humphrey Bogart! It's the rare film actor who can take away your eye from Bogart.; 3/28/19, 7:17 AM
Jack Klompus said...: Cobb is great as Lt. Kinderman in The Exorcist.; 3/28/19, 8:13 AM
Ken B said...: Stu Grimshaw
The J is to echo his real name, Lew Jacobi.; 3/28/19, 8:58 AM
Professional lady said...: Olivier's makeup in Othello always looked overdone to me. It was greasy looking and had a green tinge to it. I saw several of the Bard's plays last summer where females took male roles. The actresses who played Prospero and Julius Caesar pulled it off. The woman who played Marc Antony didn't. Helen Mirren played Prospero in a movie version of the Tempest - she was good. Will be interesting to see if Glenda Jackson can pull off Lear - I think she probably can.; 3/28/19, 9:46 AM
Professional lady said...: Got the DVD Julie Taymor version of A Midsummer's Night Dream at the library. It was exceptional.; 3/28/19, 9:58 AM
mikee said...: Speaking of BBC's 1970s productions of Shakespeare, 1980's John Cleese as Petruchio in Taming of the Shrew was a wonderful delight after the heavy, self-conscious plodding of Burton and Taylor.; 3/28/19, 4:48 PM
mishu said...: Enough about King Lear and Glenda Jackson. I'm just wondering what Charles Nelson Riley would do with a girl?; 3/28/19, 5:05 PM
Saint Croix said...: 12 Angry Men have sex with the Beverly Hillbillies and they give birth to Singin' in the Rain.; 3/29/19, 3:43 PM