Theatre - Kate Kellaway on a merely loveable Lear
Yukio Ninagawa's production of King Lear has excited much curiosity not only because it is the first time he has directed Shakespeare with an English cast. Ninagawa is a master of spectacle. His productions, at their best, are ravishing and exotic. But it is the casting of Nigel Hawthorne as King Lear that has attracted most publicity. Hawthorne is anything but exotic, and his gifts are peculiarly English. So what kind of Japanese/English hybrid are we to expect? It is at once apparent that Hawthorne's Lear is not "every inch a King". He requires measuring, by his daughters and himself. This is a Lear of thinly disguised low self-esteem. His anger is man-sized. He is, in many ways, a nuisance. His love game is designed, unconsciously or not, to humiliate. No wonder Cordelia will not play. And in the marvellously staged scenes at Goneril's house, we see his noisy retinue bleeding the hung carcasses of pigs (a tremendous sacrificial image for what is to follow). It is possible at this stage to admit that Goneril has a point: her dad and his crew are not easy house guests.
Hawthorne may not have "authority" in his face but he is, for all his faults, the most loveable Lear I have ever seen. And this is unusual: it is hard to achieve. But it is easy to see why the Fool, Cordelia and Kent are all so grieved by his poor judgement. His vulnerability is obvious. The problem with this Lear is obvious, too: the emotional scale of his journey is not grand enough. He has not travelled very far between scene one and the storm scene. And there is a further problem: the sets by the designer Yukio Horio are so much more royal than Lear is.
Much of the play happens in a big lacquered cabinet with black flowers blossoming on its doors. When the hinges swing open, the stage extends right to the back, which gives thrilling depth to the spectacle and can make moments that would otherwise be of little consequence extraordinarily moving. When, for example, France (Alasdair Simpson) claims Cordelia, Lear is already on his angry way out, sweeping off downstage. France's voice stops him in his tracks and thrills everyone into stunned attention. Albany's decision later to champion Gloucester is moving in a similar way.
But the storm scene is a brave fiasco. It is the driest storm on record and, in place of water, silver boulders keep dropping down from the sky, noisily, sometimes accompanied by ridiculous small silver pebbles. The stones rudely punctuate Lear's speech in the same way that an untrained percussionist might spoil a symphony. And the unfortunate Hawthorne cannot hope to convey any sense of immersion in this lunar landscape. He has started to look like a minor saint with behaviour problems.
But the hovel scene (the most spacious hovel ever seen) is an improvement. We have already met Lear's limber Japanese fool (Hiroyuki Sanada). He is beautiful, light as a dragonfly and more colourful. He has a lost tone to his voice, as if he were missing Cordelia simply through sound. The fool is an outsider and this is a casting gamble that pays off. Michael Maloney as Edgar begins as a frantic lounge lizard in a fur-lined mauve coat. He comes into his own as Poor Tom. His disguise is much richer and more convincing than his real self. He seems not banished but free, his madness a kind of inspiration. And when he leads Gloucester to the cliff, he makes his voice take on some of the qualities of what it describes. (Listen to the way he says "murmuring surge".)
Christopher Benjamin's Kent is serviceable but stock. William Armstrong's unscintillating Edmund looks as though he might be an ambitious minicab driver who had arrived on the stage by mistake. John Carlisle's Gloucester is excellent. At the beginning, he has a typical old man's pessimism, and he seems to like the sound of his own voice. At the end, he seems to see differently. The scene of the blinding is mercilessly explicit: Gloucester's eyeballs are tossed on to the stage like ripe figs.
It is difficult to play Goneril and Regan badly. They are the girls you love to hate. But I've never seen them better played than here. Anna Chancellor as Regan looks a little like Cruella de Ville in One Hundred and One Dalmatians; there is a Disney fluidity to her movements and her nastiness. Sian Thomas as Goneril is similarly enthralled by the beastly pleasure of being herself. And they are beautiful companion pieces to each other in their long sumptuous Japanese gowns. Robin Weaver's gawky Cordelia with her long pig-tails is just right; clumsily truthful at first, ardent throughout. The relationship between Cordelia and Lear is tender and moving, just as it should be. And at the end, Nigel Hawthorne fills each "never" with loss, seeming finally to have acquired kingly stature through grief.
"King Lear" plays at the Barbican Theatre (0171-638 8891), Silk Street, London EC2
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