King Lear...

[fajrdrako]

This evening I watched the Ian McKellen 2008 version of King Lear with commodorified, raynedaze, and auriaephialia.

First off, King Lear is far from my favourite Shakespeare. One of my least favourite. So grim, so many nasty people betraying their families, so little hope for anyone. But I've seen some terrific productions - my first sight of Ralph Fiennes (as Edmund) was unforgettable.

This one was good. Good enough to draw me in emotionally. A lot of the credit goes to Ian McKellen, who is endearing enough to soften the harsh and often cruel character of Lear.

1. It was a Royal Shakespeare Company production, and, typically, had some of the oddities of RSC productions that seem to have been a tradition since at least the 1970s. Not much colour in the costumes, lots of black and white, a certain type of enunciation and acting. Though I thought Goneril sounded as if she had an incongruous North London accent. (Not that I have any kind of an ear for British accents.)
   
   
2. As usual, I keep confusing Goneril and Regan, and their respective husbands, Cornwall and Albany. I've never seen a production in which I could keep them straight. I thought Goneril looked like Miss Hannigan in Doctor Who: The Next Doctor, with a huge skirt and red dress, dark hair and pail skin, and a cold manner against a dull background when everyone else was in monochrome.
   
   
3. I thought Philip Winchester was great as Edmund, though for the first half of the movie I thought he'd wandered out of Wuthering Heights (the storm and the setting reinforced that impression), and for the second half, where he was more militaristic, it was as if he had stepped out of a Sharpe movie, complete with effete, posh sneer.
   
   
4. I always love the scene where Edgar lies to his father about the cliff.
   
   
5. Sylvester McCoy made a very odd fool. Oddly dressed in a patterned Edwardian dressing gown, he consistently looked more like the Doctor than a Shakespearean Fool - though I've seen Shakespearean Fools of all types, shapes, and genders.
   
   
6. The vaguely eastern-European vaguely-19th century costuming seemed somewhat out of place to me. I kept thinking of Barrayar.
   
   
7. After the show, we were shown Ian McKellen's comments on Lear. One interesting thing he said was that he thought, throughout the course of the play, Lear lost his faith in the gods. I'd never considered that before, but it seemed right.
   
   
   

Comments

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

That's fascinating about Lear and Henry V. I never thought of them that way, but you're so right. Yesterday my friends and I were talking about how you could see that when Lear became unable to hold his kindgom together, it totally fell apart, because there was no rule of law (or it wasn't strong enough), no sense of unity. This production particularly gave the impression that Lear was a soldier not a statesman, not even a politician.

I see he wrote Henry V around 1598 and Lear about 1605 - so within the same decade but not close to each other. And between them, a number of plays that aren't about Kings. No doubt the ideas were simmering in his head.

Did Lear have political implications for his own time? I imagine in the beginning of James' reign, people wanted to think the throne was secure and not about to be a bone of contention.

[raissad.livejournal.com]

James was big on Divine Right. It's why his son, Charles I, got into trouble with Parliament leading to the Interregnum.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Given James' circumstances, he had to be big on divine right. I've always liked James: I think he handled his rather odd situation well. It set up problems for the next generation, but could have been so much worse.