"Gold has set the play in what I took to be a contemporary universe, but I have no idea why the great hall where Lear (Glenda Jackson) meets with his family to divvy up his kingdom is covered in gold leaf. Are we in a North Korean palace? Trump Tower? A Russian oligarch’s apartment?... Goneril (Elizabeth Marvel, overreaching as usual) has an American twang, while Regan (Aisling O’Sullivan) speaks with an Irish brogue, and Ruth Wilson, doing her very best as Cordelia, and later as the Fool, has clear, British stage diction. Wouldn’t Lear’s daughters have grown up and been educated in the same place? Are their accents meant to indicate that they’ve already retreated into separate territories? Or does Gold mean to telegraph who the daughters 'really' are by giving them their own voices?... [R]ather than allow these actors to do what they do so well, Gold degrades their grace. He has [Pedro] Pascal’s Edmund... simulate a quickie with Goneril, after which she smears his lips with their sexual fluids. Is this a shocking gesture or a 'shocking' gesture? There’s much talk of body parts and copulation in 'King Lear,' as well as a great deal of nasty paternal derision, as when Lear calls his elder daughters 'unnatural hags.' When Glenda Jackson, the butch girl of my dreams from all those incredible seventies movies, utters such lines, the other actors shrink... In the first half of the play, she is ferocious and loud, grandstanding and bellowing. She calms down in the second half, when Lear’s mind disintegrates, and I wish she could have shown some of that nuance sooner."
The New Yorker's Hilton Als does not like Sam Gold's version of "King Lear." The "butch girl of [his] dreams" just isn't doing it right, for some reason that I suppose I'd have to see the production to understand. The headline extracts Als's point like this: "Sam Gold’s Self-Serving Vision of 'King Lear'/In a new staging, the director uses Shakespeare’s words as a launching pad from which to explore his own theatrical concerns."
Why "Self-Serving"? Gold is pleasing himself and not the audience? But why is the audience disserved? There are so many productions of "King Lear." It's not as if the audience needs one particular approach and not another. At one point, Als asks, "But where do you draw the line between an interpretation that is freeing—and thus freeing to the audience, too—and one that is just frustratingly and bafflingly self-indulgent?" And that's a question I would ask about this review.
Speaking of self-indulgent, Als spends a good part of his column talking about Duke Ellington, whose connection to the subject is nothing more than that he once recorded an album full of instrumentals inspired by Shakespeare plays. It is, according to Als, "a sensual, undulating, and thoughtful album" that shows "the value of great artists’ being driven by the work of other great artists to create something new." So what? That has little to do with putting on a play with actors that have to speak a pre-determined text that has been interpreted and reinterpreted thousands of times.
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The concept of KING Lear being played by a woman sounded awful in the very beginning. How very boringly repetitiously Social Justice Warrior-ly avant-garde. Now it really really sound's awful.
If Gold had something to say, he should have used his OWN words or a new creation instead of bastardizing another person's vision.
Just inserting women into a known play or character doesn't make you anything special or new. It makes you a thief. And a boring one at that.
"for some reason"
The sheer absurdity of the "reinterpretation" described in the posted excerpt wasn't enough "reason"?
Gold has set the play in what I took to be a contemporary universe, but I have no idea why the great hall where Lear (Glenda Jackson) meets with his family to divvy up his kingdom is covered in gold leaf. Are we in a North Korean palace? Trump Tower? A Russian oligarch’s apartment?
"I love go-o-o-old... so much I even lost my genitalia in an unfortunate schmelting accident."
This production might surpass Krusty the Klown's comedic interpretation for "worst Lear in 400 years."
King Lear and her King wife. The transgender spectrum is wide and shallow.
Krusty the Klown's comedic interpretation
"The other critics told me to be mean and you should always give in to peer pressure."
UK: Baa-rmy! See King Lear...performed by SHEEP ...which sounds like something they'd do around here to go along with the chicken-catching contest where the prize to take home was the chicken you caught.
butch girl of my dreams
He gay.
Als spends a good part of his column talking about Duke Ellington
They black.
I think if a production is substantially altered from the original, it should be marketed as a new work. It sounds like this should be "Queen Lear" by Something Gold, and somewhere down the playbill it should say, "Based on 'King Lear'" and "Dialogue by William Shakespeare."
Sarah Bernhardt played Hamlet and won favorable reviews. Helen Mirren played the Prospero part in The Tempest. Prospero is a King Lear who has his shit together. He arranges for a happy marriage for his daughter and a happy or,anyway, dignified retirement for himself. In some ways, it makes sense to play Prospero as a kindly mother. I just don't see Lear as in any way motherly............The award for worst miscasting in a Shakespearean role still belongs to James Cagney who played Bottom in a Midsummer Night's Dream.
The short version is:
King Lear is a great play. This version is not great. Thumb's down!
That's pretty much what theatrical critics do for a living, but if every review was "It stinks!" or "I love this!" then the editor would have to seriously reconsider if this is a good use of payroll.
And people like to call the Elizabethan stage accents in Game of Thrones pretentious...
Game of Thrones: Targaryen Prince Gets "Crowned" in an unfortunate smelting accident .
I like the CLANK when he hits the ground.
Duke Ellington composed music for a 60's production of Love's Labour's Lost at the Shakespeare Festival at Stratford, Ontario. It's really good - Duke Ellington was a very creative and intelligent man. That being said, I've seen some Shakespeare productions where a woman played a male role. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. After all, Shakespeare was a gender bender - there's lot's of women disguised as men in his plays and boys originally played the female parts.
Diversity! I suppose it's gauche today to comment on one's regional accent, even in the UK, but it is off-putting to hear these in Shakespearean drama.
I like Ruth Wilson and could easily believe she'd be a great stage actress. I only know Elizabeth Marvel from Homeland--she played the President and was...not good. I have a tougher time imagining her doing well on stage.
I enjoyed watching The Tempest, starring Helen Mirren as Prospero.
However, that Tempest production lacked a scene where characters smeared their lips with their mixed sexual fluids.
Targaryen Prince Gets "Crowned" in an unfortunate smelting accident .
There was nothing unfortunate (at least not for anyone not named Viserys) or accidental about that.
"Just inserting women into a known play..."
It's a way to give a great role to a great actress, and it's been done done many times. From Wikipedia:
"From the 20th century, a number of women have played male roles in the play ["King Lear"]; most commonly the Fool, who has been played (among others) by Judy Davis, Emma Thompson and Robyn Nevin. Lear himself has been played by Marianne Hoppe in 1990,[43] by Janet Wright in 1995, by Kathryn Hunter in 1996–97,] and by Glenda Jackson in 2016 and 2019."
Don't forget that in Shakespeare's time men were "inserted" in all the female roles! Since that was the norm, what's wrong with the reverse? Especially in the case of a very old man. When men and women get old, they get a lot more alike.
And when men and women are very young, they can be a lot more alike. Many actresses have played Hamlet, going back to Sarah Bernhardt (photos here).
It's not really a stunt, since it's been done often and for ordinary reasons — getting great actors in great roles, drawing an audience, jazzing things up.
Game of Thrones: Targaryen Prince Gets "Crowned" in an unfortunate smelting accident .
They poured gold-colored melted plastic on his head? Yikes!
Two reasons it wasn't gold: it was boiling (= 4,900 F for gold, much hotter than their fire could get), and the guy could pick it and raise it to shoulder level, whereas a cubic foot of gold weighs 1200 pounds.
But why is the audience disserved? There are so many productions of "King Lear." It's not as if the audience needs one particular approach and not another.
The audience is disserved because Gold is advertising that he's doing Shakespeare's King Lear, and he's not.
You want to do Romeo and Juliet in NYC in the 50s? Awesome! Write West Side Story,
You're not good enough to write West Side Story? That's too bad. Now STFU, and do Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, not your pathetic version. The same goes for Lear.
Don't forget that in Shakespeare's time men were "inserted" in all the female roles! Since that was the norm, what's wrong with the reverse? Especially in the case of a very old man. When men and women get old, they get a lot more alike.
The boys were "inserted" as women, and played that way.
Was Glenda Jackson made up to look like a man, and played as a man? Or was she a female "King"?
The first would be following the norm. The second would not
We saw this on opening night. I’d never seen King Lear and was intrigued by the idea of Glenda Jackson. This wasn’t exactly new...she played Lear at The Old Vic a couple of years ago in a different production.
I have no basis for comparison. I thoroughly enjoyed the play, but as my husband and I talked the next day, we had similar issues with the production. I thought Jackson was great. She’s tiny, which is noticeable. She is all acerbic wit and sharp tongue, full of kingly entitlement. The fact that she’s a woman wasn’t noticeable after a few minutes. I was aware it was Glenda playing Lear in the same way I’d be aware it was Olivier playing Lear.
That being said...the production itself feels “tricked up”. Maybe that’s what Als is noticing. Gloucester also played by a woman, the silly sex stuff, Cornwall played by a deaf actor with a sign language interpreter at his side, American flag socks on The Fool as just some examples... It was too much and was distracting...that’s a lot of “new interpretation” in one go. (My main criticism was with the daughters...no flow in the characters from beginning to end...just disconnected actions and reactions. That impacted the story itself and my emotional involvement.)
If Gold’s interpretation didn’t work, it’s not because of Glenda Jackson.
.
Akira Kurasawa dd a nice adaptation in Ran (1985), with Lear as a Japanese war lord with three fractious sons.
I have to admit I have never seen King Lear performed on the stage. I have read the play and I have seen the movie Ran, which is basically Japanese King Lear, but an actual performance has eluded me. The play is powerful and quite excellent.
As to using women and traditionally male roles and vice-versa, it sometimes works just fine and sometimes it comes across as awkward. It often depends on the production and the actor, but occasionally a particular role needs to be played by a particular type of person. The King Lear role is definitely one that could and should work with a woman, given Lear is the king divvying up his kingdom among his children. Female monarchs are not uncommon historically and they often ruled pretty much like a man would anyway. It actually could be a bit more powerful to see a mother get backstabbed by her own children, depending on how it is presented. King Lear himself is a bit of an ass and an actress who tried to play it straight might come across as less sympathetic than a man doing the same. Mothers are not supposed to be jerks.
Wherever the line between a reasonable Shakespearean adaptation and a self-indulgent one lies, Julie Taymor's Titus is way, way over it...
I'm thankful that no commenters are involved in the theatre arts! :D
I have no objection in theory to King Lear's being played by a woman--although I think that men are more successful at female drag than women at male drag. Women are generally too small to make convincing men, and their hips are too wide and their rears too big, not to mention the problem of the bustline. By contrast, slender boys and young men can fairly successfully impersonate slender girls onstage--as they have done in the theater for thousands of years.
What I really can't stand about many performances of Shakespeare these days--and this "King Lear seems no exception--are all the lewd gestures that directors feel compelled to throw into the play, apparently on the belief that audiences will otherwise be bored by Shakespeare's language. It's one thing to have the comic lowlifes among the characters get bawdy and off-color, but Goneril and her husband (or is it Regan?) having simulated sex onstage complete with bodily fluids? I don't think Shakespeare would have ever had in mind. A few years ago I saw a performance of "As You Like it" in which the Fool was constantly feeling up Rosalind. That would have cost him his head in real life--and Rosalind, the young and virginal daughter of a duke, would never have tolerated it. But the director evidently thought he needed to jazz up the scene a little bit.
would have liked that idea.
Thanks, but I'd rather not have Shakespeare jazzed up.
Jeremy Irons as the older Henry IV in Sam Mendes' production of The Hollow Crown series, said philosophically; 'that T .S. Eliot’s idea that with Shakespeare we can never be right, but can only “from time to time change our way of being wrong.”'
Occasionally jazzing up opera works, Peter Sellars "Così Fan Tutte" set in a 1950's Cape Cod diner worked quite well because Mozart plays cynicism for laughs with an archly satirical take on relationships between men and women, and the setting didn't seem at all odd. However this production may be even more bizarre than a lesbian Othello.
Tcrosse observes: Akira Kurasawa dd a nice adaptation in Ran (1985), with Lear as a Japanese war lord with three fractious sons.
His take on Macbeth, Throne of Blood, was, IMO, less successful.
Smoothest update of a Shakespeare line: in Ian McKellen's modern dress version of Richard III, when his jeep gets stuck in the mud, he cries out "My kingdom for a horse."......I'd like to see a version of MacBeth, where Lady MacBeth has a lapdog named Spot.
@mockturtle...I think that Kurosawa's extensive use of NOH theater and classic music makes Throne of Blood problematic for non-Japanese. Mifune, as usual, is electric as Macbeth.
Jazzing up Shakespeare is fine. Many of the stories involved are timeless and can be placed in all sorts of settings. I've seen a production of Richard III that used guns instead of swords and the play still works and works very well. It helps that the guns are jarring, which works well with the scenes that they are employed. They still managed to get the swordfight in at the end, apparently because Richard had gone past the bend at that point and thought it amusing.
That said, I don't need to see those sorts of bodily fluids. It's gross.
I'm actually just reading King Lear. I've tried a number of S's plays and never got very far. This one seems to be working, perhaps in part because I saw the first few minutes of a BBC(?) one with Anthony Hopkins as KL and now I am reading it and trying to imagine him speaking the words (and others, obv). May work.
Christopher Moore has written a version of Lear told from the POV of the jester. Fool A Novel
available you-know-where.
tcrosse, he also wrote a sequel "The Serpent of Venice" that's delightful.
@William...I liked that version too...Nigel Hawthorn was quite good as the false, fleeting, perjured, Clarence. Annette Bening, meh, but Maggie Smith, Kristin Scott Thomas, the Jims Broadbent and Carter were all spot on.
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