KVT – Shakespearean Storms, Deceits and Madness

KVT gets thoroughly Leared up

We get some truly wonderful cultural stuff put in front of our noses!

TNT’s King Lear at the opera House this week was a more than satisfying performance that has kept me thinking about, amongst other things, aging and dementia and the perfidy that some children measure against their parents.

King Lear is probably one of the most difficult plays to get across to an audience but this small and internationally renowned company really succeeded in handing us a cohesive storyline and giving us the full, dramatic beauty of Shakespeare’s poetry.

My first live Lear was way back in the 80s when I caught a performance by a traveling company called Footsbarn which traveled the world, on invitation, and performed in a small a circus tent. In the production I saw, they were in a new tent and the Lear costumes and minimal sets were all made from remnants of the old one. Footsbarn completely changed the way I went about directing live theater, about understanding Shakespeare, and also made me fall in love with the possibilities abounding in the Lear text. Had I seen TNT’s production at the same impressionable stage of my development, I dare say I would have been similarly affected.

Since that initial infatuation I’ve seen great and good Lears, Lears on film, Lears in modern dress, Lears with a female lead. This one took me back in mind to the mode of the Mediaeval mystery plays put on in and around the back of horse drawn carts in public squares….not too much different from the way traveling players performed political and traditional plays in rural Vietnamese villages not so long ago. Actors with a mulitude of roles to act and masks to wear and music to play and sing to tie it all together. Brilliant really!

Lear is in two texts by Shakespeare and productions of it, even by Shakespeare’s company, were abridged to suit the size of the company, the audience and the mode of travel. TNT has seven actors on stage in this Asian tour and the director has deleted some characters, put speeches put into the mouths of others, turned the spotlight of the final moments onto one of the youngest characters, and done it all in the time honored way of companies traveling on a budget with a minimal set and minimal costumes changes.

Every good interpretation of Lear has a different emphasis on Lear’s descent into madness and the frailties, deceptions, betrayals and loyalties that abound, and for me, the fact that TNT’s still has some of us discussing, extrapolating and re-reading versions of the play is indicative of its success.

Nowadays with the world so used to experiencing grandiose theatrical productions that cost a mint and where talent too often makes way for the star factor and the mediocre, it’s refreshing to know that quality and simple honesty in the theater can still survive…and, hopefully flourish.

I wonder if it was locale and awareness of sensibilities that deprived the performance of some of the bawdiness that can leaven the play’s overwhelming drama.

I missed TNT’s dramatizations of Dickens ‘Oliver Twist’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’ but will definitely try to see what they can do with Swift’s ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ when the company does its next swing thru Vietnam.