Photo: Johann Persson
cast list
Harry Attwell, Tom Beard, Pippa Bennett-Warner, Stefano Braschi, Ron Cook, Michael Hadley, Derek Jacobi, Paul Jesson, Gwilym Lee, Gina McKee, Alec Newman, Justine Mitchell, Derek Hutchinson, Amit Shah, Gideon Turner, Ashley Zhangazha
directed by
Michael Grandage
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King Lear is a summit that most great actors these days stay clear of until late into their careers. Ian McKellen and David Warner have both tackled the part only recently and now Derek Jacobi has reached the grand age of 72 before giving us his interpretation.
The difficulty with an older actor playing it is that the required puff for such a gruelling challenge can be long gone, evidenced by Olivier’s late TV appearance, although that was made up for with an unsurpassed sense of faded authority and world-weariness that was all too real.
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Jacobi certainly doesn’t lack the necessary power, though he hardly needs it in the tiny space of the Donmar. Even so, he whispers the whole of the “Blow winds and crack your cheeks” speech in a storm scene that verges on the expressionistic. It’s a striking insight in an evening that doesn’t lack interesting moments.
Goneril (Gina McKee) grabs Albany (Tom Beard) by the balls and he responds with strangulation but they bounce back as though this is just a normal part of an abusive relationship. There’s a vividness in Jacobi’s miming of disgust at the female sexual organs and in the grim humour of his stamping out the mouse he was coo-cooing a moment before.
McKee and Justine Mitchell as Regan begin with extreme gentleness, appearing perfectly reasonable in their concern over their father’s retirement excesses, but they soon build to a glacial ferocity.
There’s an iciness to the whole of Michael Grandage’s production, which impresses much more than it moves. Unembellished, It sits starkly inside Christopher Oram’s white-daubed wooden box and, while Jacobi is magnificent in his child-like insanity and touching in his final moments, much of the emoting elsewhere feels squeezed out.
Paul Jesson is a solid Gloucester and none of the ensemble could be said to be anything less.
Grandage gives the play clarity and swiftness and difficult passages float by undemandingly (it helps that some are cut). It’s something that can’t be said about some productions better than this but accessibility comes at the expense of weight and monumentaiity and it’s more than just Ron Cook’s coiled Fool that disappears into the ether without an afterthought.
When Jacobi’s Lear talks about his poor hanged fool, he’s clearly referring to Cordelia and it’s characteristic of Grandage’s unequivocal approach.
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London reviews
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For more theatre reviews, come and visit us at Exeunt
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Du Goudron et des Plumes, Barbican
King Lear, Roundhouse
Double Falsehood, Union
Twisted Tales, Lyric Hammersmith
Less Than Kind, Jermyn Street
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