Lear in the Berkshires

We've been taking our kids to Shakespeare & Co. performances for about 17 years, and the troupe never disappoints. The players bring true, bawdy life to the plays. Plus, they enunciate real good. Last night was "King Lear."

This is the group's second year at their new home in Lenox, Mass., about a mile from where they started. The facilities are brand spanking new but, unfortunately, are indoors; the outdoor performances on the edge of the forest were magical. They are doing some works outdoors in the "Rose Footprint," benches set within the boundaries of the replica of The Rose theater they're building, but it only holds a few dozen people at this point. So, for now we're stuck comfortably indoors.

Shakespeare & Co. excels at the comedies: codpieces, pratfalls, silly accents...as well as pluck and love and self-discovery. They're not as facile with the tragedies. Under the direction of the troupe's founder, Tina Packer, last night's Lear — technically still in previews, so I'm basically reviewing beta software — was moving despite its flaws.

This is a tough play in every direction. It is unrelenting in its proclaiming of the failure of love. It takes an hour and a half of people being angry at one another to get things going. The on-stage violence — particularly the gouging out of Gloucester's eyes — is gruesome out of modern measure. The bodies pile up like cordwood at the end. The main character who goes mad is the easiest to ken of all the characters who are or pretend to be dissociated from reality.

That last reason is perhaps why the secondary characters were more convincing last night than the main ones. Malcolm Ingram's Kent, Daniel Sherman's Albany and Mel Cobb's Oswald were commanding presences whose persons revealed themselves throughout the course of the play. Kristin Wold's Cordelia was touching and believable. Mark Saturno's Cornwall revealed layer after layer of noble violence and wickeness. Ariel Bock and and Ellizabeth Aspenlieder as Goneril and Regan did what they must to drive their father insane but seemed to have little inner life until they played together; they are not Shakespeare's most individualized characters.

The main characters had a harder job of it. Only Gloucester has an arc which seemed unproblematic: stuff happens to him that pushes him towards his fate; Johnny Lee Davenport handled the role with aplomb. John Douglas Thompson shouted his way through Edmund with too much lust and not enough cunning; that's a plausible interpretation given the theme of the bastard as being closer to untamed nature, and it was clear why the sisters would fall for Thompson's Edmund, but his villainy didn't feel crooked or cooked enough.

Article Author: David Weinberger

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