King Lear

With three years in rehearsal, Dodin's first ever Shakespeare at the age of 62, should have been a made-to-order miracle, but instead, this well-trod tale of filial perfidy, power, deception, death and brutality, failed to engage me.

King Lear is one of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies, but working from a new translation by Dina Dodina, in a condensed prose version rather than verse, Dodin turns it into a domestic drama, one of generational clashes and shifting hierarchies.

It is a groggy Lear, played by Petr Semak that we meet in scene one, stumbling through the audience, and eyeing up the crowd. He is no roaring, dynamic leader, bristling with energy, but wears the shapeless gown of a Bedlam in-patient. Stripped of any Royal trappings Dodin's Lear is no more than a once brutal, now senile parent to be shunted between ungrateful kids, only to die alone and exposed. At no point does he cut the figure of a statesman, so you never really have a point of reference, and as a patriarch, he remains throughout unhinged, no longer admired or exalted, while his three daughters break with the tyranny of his household.

The abuse under which Goneril, Regan and Cordelia have lived is revealed toward the end of the second act when dressed in bright white Elizabethan confections, comprising huge half fan collars and voluminous skirts – and much like ballerinas springing from the confines of a musical jewellery box – they daintily but uncomfortably dance around their father as he bathes in the glow of their adoration. Their contrived supplication and complaisance are deeply unsettling.

David Borovsky's monochrome costumes and barn-like set, with its criss-crossed wooden planks, gives the production the feel of a black and white movie, an effect enhanced by the use of a pianola at the edge of the stage, played by the Fool at moments of dramatic tension. (This later takes on a life of its own as a peripatetic Lear spirals into madness). With this beautifully crafted offstage accompaniment, I was disappointed when cheap sound effects were resorted to, to recreate the pivotal storm, and similarly – while Lear and his retinue cavort around fully naked when he goes whacko in Dover – Gloucester's eye gouging was done under cover of darkness. It seemed cowardly not to conjure up something satisfactorily gruesome. I also found the cutting to black that perforates the second half of this production, (to simulate Gloucester's blindness) a clunky ineffective conceit .

Dodin may be the king of Russian theatre, but for me this Lear was a highbrow and esoteric experience, one aimed only at the head not the heart. Dodina's reworking and rewriting of the Bard's original text also left a lot to be desired. Great theatre should engage and alter you emotionally as well as intellectually, (as Dodin's Uncle Vanya did in 2005) but unfortunately this production failed in that respect.

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