I have a couple of crappy movies to review (and hopefully a third tomorrow), but I just got back from the Goodman's King Lear and need to sort of get that out of my system first.
It was a really good production, but I can't say I "liked" the play. In the post-show discussion, the director and literary manager etc. were saying Lear was one of Shakespeare's least popular plays for a while, because it's "kind of" bleak and nihilistic. "Kind of"? Dude, only three named characters are left alive at the end, and one of them is saying he expects and/or hopes to die soon. The whole world falls apart, and there's no Fortinbras at the end to swoop in and say "Wow, that sucks, but at least I'm here now to rule the country." "Bleak" ain't the half of it.
This production is set in modern times, in eastern Europe or the Balkans or a former Soviet republic. Reagan and Gonereil look and act like Russian Mafia princesses, and Reagan's husband is a shaved-head thug with hopped-up followers. The guards patrol with Kalishnikovs and pistols, and the fighting is done with guns, not swords. Lear is like Tito, a charismatic leader and the father of not only his daughters but his people. At his party at the beginning, the guests all sing a song that lauds him as "Papa, papa, papa." And Lear's so used to this adoration that he doesn't stop to think it's been bought, or forced, and is not immutable.
I didn't have any trouble buying the modern setting, but the language took some getting used to for me in the first act. It's so formalized while the actions and settings are so familiar or real. I don't read or see enough Shakespeare that it's not weird for me to see folks in modern dress speaking in iambic pentameter and ending soliloquies with couplets. Like I said, it just took some getting used to. Iambic pentameter = doublets and hose, not slinky cocktail dresses and trenchcoats. But I'd rather have the modern setting and the initial discomfort than have it set in Shakespearean times, or "the past" or something not as real.
Because this is a very real play. The modern setting took it from "Wow, this is a tragic play" to "Holy crap, this stuff is happening now." Glouchester's blinding took place in a stainless-steel kitchen while Cornwall's henchmen fried up some post-thuggery vittels. Lear ended up wandering not a desolate heath, but the garbage-strewn streets of a bombed-out city. And that's something I could see -- I can imagine a deposed leader (if he managed not to be executed like Ceacescu) wandering the streets homeless. That kind of madness rings much more true and immediate than someone rending his robes and howling at the sky. I know I've seen (and crossed the street or studiously read my book on the El to avoid) those kind of walking wounded in every city I've ever lived in. Suddenly, it's not "This man has been cursed by the gods, this is high tragedy that has nothing to do with mere mortals like me," but it becomes something real and immediate and raw and conceivable.
Probably because the setting made it so much more immediate, the play depressed the hell out of me. I have no idea how the actors have avoided slitting their wrists thus far. This shit is happening in Darfur and Iraq and Lebanon and the Balkans and countless other places in the world, and this is a play that doesn't give you any hope for a solution. By the end, society has fallen apart, the strong prey on the weak, and it looks like it's only going to get worse. There is no upside.
A lot of the action that happens seems depressingly relevant. Thrash an awful lot of sexual assault in this production, which I think just adds to the depressing realness of it all. This isn't just high-falutin' language and noble sentiments -- Cordelia sure looks like she's been raped and tortured at the end. Soldiers humiliate their adversaries by ripping down their pants and mounting them. That sort of sexual humiliation brings Abu Grahib and the mass rapes of Bosnian women to mind, and makes it harder to escape the reality that this is happening now. One scene involves people dragging wrapped corpses across the stage and dumping them in a mass grave. That seems far to real and relevant today to even pretend to have the remove of "Oh, it's drama, it's a night out, it's entertainment."
So I recommend the production, I think it's a great staging, but it's not something that I can recommend for light entertainment. I've been spending so much time on my popcorn movies and TV shows and such that I'd managed to forget that art isn't always escapism, it's something that makes you confront the things you'd rather not see. Which is good, but after a long summer of mindlessness, it's a bit of a shock to the system. By winter, I'll probably have adapted. Right now, it's still startling to me.
Anyway. Those are my initial thoughts. Maybe I'll have more when I have time to process it. Go see it, but don't expect anything perky. (And I know how ridiculous that sounds: It's LEAR. It's TRAGEDY. But for some reason, I can watch Greek tragedy or Shakespeare set in a different time at a bit of a remove, which I didn't have with this. That probably points to it being one hell of an effective show.)
It was a really good production, but I can't say I "liked" the play. In the post-show discussion, the director and literary manager etc. were saying Lear was one of Shakespeare's least popular plays for a while, because it's "kind of" bleak and nihilistic. "Kind of"? Dude, only three named characters are left alive at the end, and one of them is saying he expects and/or hopes to die soon. The whole world falls apart, and there's no Fortinbras at the end to swoop in and say "Wow, that sucks, but at least I'm here now to rule the country." "Bleak" ain't the half of it.
This production is set in modern times, in eastern Europe or the Balkans or a former Soviet republic. Reagan and Gonereil look and act like Russian Mafia princesses, and Reagan's husband is a shaved-head thug with hopped-up followers. The guards patrol with Kalishnikovs and pistols, and the fighting is done with guns, not swords. Lear is like Tito, a charismatic leader and the father of not only his daughters but his people. At his party at the beginning, the guests all sing a song that lauds him as "Papa, papa, papa." And Lear's so used to this adoration that he doesn't stop to think it's been bought, or forced, and is not immutable.
I didn't have any trouble buying the modern setting, but the language took some getting used to for me in the first act. It's so formalized while the actions and settings are so familiar or real. I don't read or see enough Shakespeare that it's not weird for me to see folks in modern dress speaking in iambic pentameter and ending soliloquies with couplets. Like I said, it just took some getting used to. Iambic pentameter = doublets and hose, not slinky cocktail dresses and trenchcoats. But I'd rather have the modern setting and the initial discomfort than have it set in Shakespearean times, or "the past" or something not as real.
Because this is a very real play. The modern setting took it from "Wow, this is a tragic play" to "Holy crap, this stuff is happening now." Glouchester's blinding took place in a stainless-steel kitchen while Cornwall's henchmen fried up some post-thuggery vittels. Lear ended up wandering not a desolate heath, but the garbage-strewn streets of a bombed-out city. And that's something I could see -- I can imagine a deposed leader (if he managed not to be executed like Ceacescu) wandering the streets homeless. That kind of madness rings much more true and immediate than someone rending his robes and howling at the sky. I know I've seen (and crossed the street or studiously read my book on the El to avoid) those kind of walking wounded in every city I've ever lived in. Suddenly, it's not "This man has been cursed by the gods, this is high tragedy that has nothing to do with mere mortals like me," but it becomes something real and immediate and raw and conceivable.
Probably because the setting made it so much more immediate, the play depressed the hell out of me. I have no idea how the actors have avoided slitting their wrists thus far. This shit is happening in Darfur and Iraq and Lebanon and the Balkans and countless other places in the world, and this is a play that doesn't give you any hope for a solution. By the end, society has fallen apart, the strong prey on the weak, and it looks like it's only going to get worse. There is no upside.
A lot of the action that happens seems depressingly relevant. Thrash an awful lot of sexual assault in this production, which I think just adds to the depressing realness of it all. This isn't just high-falutin' language and noble sentiments -- Cordelia sure looks like she's been raped and tortured at the end. Soldiers humiliate their adversaries by ripping down their pants and mounting them. That sort of sexual humiliation brings Abu Grahib and the mass rapes of Bosnian women to mind, and makes it harder to escape the reality that this is happening now. One scene involves people dragging wrapped corpses across the stage and dumping them in a mass grave. That seems far to real and relevant today to even pretend to have the remove of "Oh, it's drama, it's a night out, it's entertainment."
So I recommend the production, I think it's a great staging, but it's not something that I can recommend for light entertainment. I've been spending so much time on my popcorn movies and TV shows and such that I'd managed to forget that art isn't always escapism, it's something that makes you confront the things you'd rather not see. Which is good, but after a long summer of mindlessness, it's a bit of a shock to the system. By winter, I'll probably have adapted. Right now, it's still startling to me.
Anyway. Those are my initial thoughts. Maybe I'll have more when I have time to process it. Go see it, but don't expect anything perky. (And I know how ridiculous that sounds: It's LEAR. It's TRAGEDY. But for some reason, I can watch Greek tragedy or Shakespeare set in a different time at a bit of a remove, which I didn't have with this. That probably points to it being one hell of an effective show.)
posted by SAJ at
11:58 PM
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