The Royal Exchange Theatre’s 50th anniversary season, A Homecoming, is their best in years. As I keep saying, new Artistic Director and Co-CEO Selina Cartmell has completely revitalised the theatre. The least exciting show in the programme is, of course, King Lear, but I guess there had to be a classic in there, and indeed, this programme has something for everyone. Sadly, it is fifth time unlucky for the RX, as this production lacks the brilliance, boldness and bite of the first four productions, and the venue-wide exhibition, that came before it.
Based on the semi-legendary monarch, Leir of Britain, the play is about an aging king whose pride, poor judgement and impulsive decision to divide his kingdom lead to madness, betrayal, and widespread death. That alone is enough to make this play relevant: it sounds a lot like a certain American President who wants to be a King and is terrorising his own country and can’t get out of an unexplained war of choice in the Middle East.
But whilst many classics remain relevant, I believe that they should only be touched if you’re going to do something interesting with it, as the RX often do, from their Mancunian Romeo and Juliet and their Indian Great Expectations. This production, directed by Matthew Dunster, though relatively safe, makes one controversial creative choice: it excises the character of the Fool entirely, instead having Leir (a gripping David Threlfall) delivers the Fool’s lines himself, albeit in a different voice, acting as a psychological figment or split personality to manifest his growing dementia and madness. It’s refreshing in theory but does not always work so well in execution.
Whilst the Fool offers comedic relief in a very serious play, Dunster has wisely allowed quite a few lines to become funny, by having the actors say them differently. But it’s not enough to save this very dry, heavy text, especially because he has taken a stripped-back approach to design.
That is not to say that the design is not good; it’s actually quite gorgeous, especially Anna Fleischle’s set. The floor is filled with golden cracks, which eventually light up bright orange, the overflowing gold (representing excessive wealth and power) turning into lava, the cracks representing Lear’s world crumbling around him – and perhaps also a reverse Midas’ Touch, in which everything goes to shit.
The ceiling is filled with circular metal structures with dangling chains, which repeatedly descend downwards. The chains are used to represent various things, from rain (actual “rain” actually fills one at one point) to insatiable wealth and actual chains. In fact, the latter two are tied together, with this ostensibly opulent lifestyle creating entrapment and restriction. They also serve to foreshadow, as eventually, the chains become more literal, representing prison cells. It’s very well-thought-out.
Lucy Carter’s lighting offers some nice tones and shades but I wish that she had allowed to be more experimental with it. Lighting is especially important in a more minimalist production, with very little actual set. Some more dynamic lighting could have kept this three-hour production from feeling three hours.
A real strength of this production is its sound. Reviewers often skirt past sound design but Holly Khan’s sound design is a highlight of this production, especially during the storm but also all throughout the production. Similarly, singer Nadine Shah, who plays Goneril, has composed a sensuous soundscape, capturing feelings throughout the play but also bringing to life the un-said through music.
Music plays an important part in this production from the very beginning, with the opening scene seeing guests arrive for a party (Cat Fuller’s costumes are especially excellent here, representing the sickening wealth of the characters). The cast dance and swoon to various famous pop songs from the ’60s or ’70s through to the ’90s, or maybe even the ’00s. The costumes are ambiguous enough to appear modern or from the late 20th century (a heel is used for that scene with the eye!), but the song choices, and the lack of technology, suggests that this production is set a few decades ago. That the songs are taken from various decades could be because each generation grows up with songs from the previous generation, which their parents played, and this play is a lot about generational differences. But it also captures the passing of time, and how things had seemingly been fine and dandy for decades, and the privileged characters had been dancing through life (literally) – but the party is finally coming to an end. Indeed, the dance number ends with Lear singing a more serious, slower, older song, perhaps suggesting that he is stuck in the past and does not see how his kingdom is changing.
It’s an excellent opening scene which immediately captures the audience’s attention but the tone them completely shifts. It feels like bait and switch but I presume it is deliberately jarring to represent how suddenly things can change, especially when people have been sweeping things under the carpet for so long but then the rug is pulled from underneath them. Whilst I was not expecting a radical pop adaptation, à la A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Bridge Theatre or Jamie Lloyd’s Much Ado About Nothing, that opening scene falsely suggested a more fresh, funky adaptation than the one we got.
It is, undoubtedly, a striking play, with interesting characters, and it’s great to see meaty, “bad” roles for women. But whilst some might see the female characters as representing sexist stereotypes, Dunster has made some small changes to modernise them and explain their actions, even if he is not justifying them. There is some great commentary regarding generational differences, and it’s magnificent how slickly the play shifts the audiences’ sympathies from the younger characters to the older characters. Dunster captures all of this but it’s not enough, and some of the commentary is inevitably lost because the action begins to feel sluggish.
The promotional material for King Lear sees the “King” scribbled out, which captures the problem with this adaptation: Lear has been denied his crown.
King Lear runs at Royal Exchange Theatre until November 15.
