King Lear at the Donmar Warehouse, Covent Garden
Displayed live in HD at the Richmond Curzon Cinema
Derek Jacobi in the title role
It took over an hour to get to Richmond from East London. Compared to Hackney, it seems like a quaint village about to be taken over by vampires in a Hammer horror film. The Curzon Richmond is down a narrow lane opposite a pub staffed by a woman with no voice, another horror element thrown in for free.
We collected our tickets and took our seats. We were treated to a 10 minute documentary with interviews with the cast and director about what an epoch-making event it was to transmit live theatre AROUND THE WORLD to HUNDREDS OF CINEMAS so that EVERYONE COULD ENJOY THE MAGIC OF SHAKESPEARE. Looking around at my fellow audience in the cinema, I was dismayed to see the average age was at least 55, and that Shakespeare was dwindling in popularity among younger people.
Then the live camera showed us the audience in the Donmar Warehouse LIVE, picking their noses, kissing, laughing... Most of them were young people, for some reason. It was like one generation watching another, in HD, live, as an anthropological research.
The play started abruptly, and I think I have been conditioned by cinema going to expect adverts, build up, titles etc.
The set was bare, distressed boards, like a fashionable restaurant these days, with almost no items like tables, chairs etc. This had the effect of focussing on specific props like: a throne; a map; the stocks.
The acting was excellent, especially Jacobi, and his fool, who were far better than the rest. Gloucester also good. Lear is a play of fantastic, overblown emotions, and this cast carried it off. Goneril and Regan were very convincing in their flattery turning to exasperation at their father's antics, and then sternness, and then finally cruelty and madness. There are themes of justice in Lear which are quite pronounced: when does just (as in righteous) revenge and tip into unjust revenge, and then, well, just revenge...? Edmund begins the play as the neglected bastard, and we feel his pain at the cruelty of his father. Likewise the partiality of Lear for Cordelia at the expense of his other daughters strikes us as unfair. So to begin with, we take the part of the villains, but become increasingly uneasy with the volume of their actions. Firstly with Edmund, who is basically pretty unprincipled, and then with Regan and Goneril, whose realpolitik starts to look extremely unattractive. Another theme: Edmund and Edgar, the brothers are both man stripped bare of all trappings of civilisation. The first as an ambitious animal, willing to do or say anything to get power. The second, hounded out of his life becomes a beggar, but for Edgar it is compassion that separates him from the beasts and ultimately redeems him.
What is pleasurable about Shakespeare is the depth to which he works on his themes and language, so that at every level - character, plot, language... the themes resonate back again and again.
The climactic scene of the play in many ways, is where Gloucester goes to the top of Dover Cliffs and throws himself onto the ground, believing he is committing suicide. He did this, and then froze for 15 seconds. Then he carried on. Lear enters, talking to himself. Then he freezes. It goes black. Then Lear is on the other side of the stage, in the middle of a speech. We were experiencing technical difficulties. A voice came on: the performance would be suspended until they fixed their satellite.
It was an exquisite embarrassment. All over the world, football matches are broadcast without a hitch, week in, week out. The epoch-making broadcast of King Lear to cinemas ALL OVER THE WORLD is marred by technical difficulties. Typically British.
The action started again, from the beginning of the scene. You couldn't help feeling sorry for the actors, who had to do it all again - all the pacing gone, the climax botched, as well as the audience in the theatre. From one point of view, it was useful as an illustration of the problems of broadcasting theatre 'live'. Theoretically, you can't just 'do it again'. It is done, once, and the moment has passed. Try to do it again, and you ruin it, as they did.
I think by the end of the play, most of the audience had forgotten the fiasco, and remembered the play. It will probably cause the producers to have a good think, however, lest they turn more tragedy to farce in the same way.
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