Vanity Thy Name Is Lear

It is the ultimate lesson in the folly of vanity and the hollowness of ego and, whilst Shakespeare's King Lear is an extreme example of the perfect family storm, it's as if the Bard wrote it to periodically give humanity a dose of wisdom.

And, as with so many of Shakespeare's works, players open themselves up to excessive comparison. How do you outdo the RSC, top the National or give your production a fresh spin without looking like an also-ran or a copycat? This time it was the turn of Northern Broadsides and the company's ubiquitous founder, Barrie Rutter, who took the title role.

With director and former medic Jonathan Miller as director, it proved itself an interesting interpretation and, in Act II, as Lear wandered aimlessly though the raging storm, you couldn't help but see a much diminished man, not just an angry man, but someone no longer in charge of his faculties.

When my father was in the early stages of dementia we would start to find the sugar bowl in the fridge, but he still knew who we were. And so it was with Rutter's Lear, wafting in and out of sanity; sometimes he knew those around him at other times he didn't.

We all know the script so, to some extent, you are looking for characterisation to lend itself to a new interpretation. This was not Lionel Bart's Oliver where the re-writers added in a section for Neil Morrisey to bolster out his role as Fagin; who would dare do that with Shakespeare?

So, in the case of Northern Broadsides and Miller, it was broad accents, strong characterisation and a nod to dementia as the main character, Canute style, shouts at the skies, urging their thunderous claps to do their worst. I wanted to cry from sorrow, not laugh at the stupidity that had brought him to that point.

For the uninitiated, King Lear is about a man who seeks to measure his daughters' love, offering first the incentive of lands before bathing in their unadulterated protestations of love.......the more syrupy they are the more they get. Goneril and Regan oblige and, initially, each get a third of Lear's divided kingdom.

But his youngest, Cordelia and the most honest of the three, refuses to play her father's game and as a result is given nothing. Her land passes to the other two, and, by virtue of marriage to a foreign king, she is effectively banished from her own country. And yes, you've guessed it, the two false sisters turncoat and dad cops his lot as the youngest tries in vain to come to his rescue, losing her life in the process.



It's only when you sit through a Shakespeare play (there are those who would argue that he never, and could never, have written so many) that you remind yourself what a rich literary tapestry each and every one of them represents, packed with wisdom and enough of life's vitamins to get the most errant knave past his wayward years.

And, it is a brave man that takes on Lear, because the purists have such large expectations of a role that so many claim should only be done at a time of life when a man can truly relate to the performance he is giving. Whilst I am sure that Mr Rutter is not yet bordering on senile dementia, he gave a most credible performance.

And top marks to the scheming sisters Goneril (Helen Sheals) and Regan (Nicola Sanderson), both utterly detestable. Had my mother been watching they would, no doubt, have been suitably commended as 'nasty pieces of work." S'ppose that means they were alright!

As for that bastard Edmund (he was illegitimate, this is not a case of the YT out of control), Sean Cernow, looked as if he needed a good wash to get rid of the grease that helped him so easily disappear up the rear ends of those eager to lap up his idle flattery.

It's been a while since I saw Lear, but I thoroughly enjoyed it and, with the passing of the years, it felt so much more pertinent. Maturity brings with it a better understanding of the Bard, or perhaps it's just that I am moving nearer to senility and, with it, a more comprehensive understanding of life?

Until April 18th (2015)