It is hard to imagine how many productions of King Lear there have been over the last 400 years. The play has fascinated actors and audiences as much as it has troubled them. 17th and 18th century theatregoers were so perturbed by the bloodbath in the final scene that a version was concocted in which Lear clambers back on his throne while Cordelia and Edgar marry and live happily ever after.
There is no Hollywood ending in David Farr’s RSC Lear at the Courtyard theatre in Stratford-on-Avon: the excellent Greg Hicks’ irascible, spiky King plums the very depths of madness and despair over three and a half hours on Jon Bausor’s wartime set of broken windows and buzzing light bulbs.
I have not been around since 1605 but, in my experience, the best King Lears – and this is certainly among them – are those in which the audience’s sympathies lie first with Regan and Goneril; the long-suffering daughters.
In Farr’s production the king’s very first entrance is a practical joke played upon his family and the harsh cackle which accompanies it is the first of many searing attacks on the peace of the very people Lear is supposed to rule. Greg Hicks’ vicious voice imbues Lear’s curse on Goneril’s womb with terrifying venom that draws gasps and flinches from Kelly Hunter’s alabaster face (and several members of the audience sat behind her).
The descent of Regan, Goneril, Albany and Edmund from being victims of circumstance and an old man’s vanity into frenzied bloodlust is mirrored in the disintegration of King, country and the set itself: walls cave in and lighting towers tumble as the storm strikes at all the last vestiges of normality in the world of the play.
It is a bit of a stretch to liken the woes of misgoverned modern nations with this apocalyptic vision of the void that opens up when the feudal order is disrupted but it’s certainly a dire warning to be very careful what you wish for when the time comes to pick a leader.
