Part Two: This Is What It Looks Like
Welcome back. We have been on a short break as this blogger recently lost a close family member, but here we are with Part Two in our triptych series on Williams critique!
Last post, we deconstructed a real review of a production of Summer and Smoke. This time, we've constructed a fictional review of an imaginary production of King Lear by William Shakespeare, a brilliant play considered to be one of the "Big Four" tragedies. This way, we're not selecting an unknown playwright or a living one to be our prototype for a faux-critique; instead we're going to let into another indisputably great playwright who is also dead, that way we won't be taking any more cheap shots than one might when eviscerating Mr. Williams. To highlight how it comes across when scholars, reviewers, critics, and commentators compare all of Williams to A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and The Glass Menagerie, we will spend almost all of this review comparing Lear to "better works" of Shakespeare: comedies. Who doesn't like a comedy better, right?!
King Lear has it all: mistaken identity, familial turmoil, duels, and that signature Shakespeare flair. This production, however, lacks the romantic, star-crossed sparkle of Romeo and Juliet or the Bard’s other triumph A Midsummer Night’s Dream, leaving something sweet to be desired of England’s foremost playwright. Lear blows until it cracks its cheeks, but with no love-lorn payoff. To be fair, it seems the playwright was experimenting with a decidedly un-romantic form when he set pen to paper, and rumor has it his life was fraught with suffering and fear of his own mortality, so it’s no wonder the work is unfocused. Still, there are some moments that make this current production worthwhile.
Gabrielle Onion’s direction tries to salvage a rusty old ship which should have stayed sank on its maiden voyage. If it were not for her efforts and the work of the scenic designer Saul Giamatti and lighting designer Katya Rasputin, the two-and-a-half hour slog would be unwatchable. This writer feels that the playwright might have better stuck to his tried and true skills before delving into foreign territory.
Kitty McGee as Cordelia is laudable as Cordelia, Lear’s daughter most like Juliet, or perhaps even Hermia. McGee can be seen mining the sub-par interactions at the top of the play for all it’s worth, carving out a genuinely likable portrayal of a character we wish we could see more of. In her scene, she’s forced to make a Sophie’s choice between flattering her father, muscularly played by Bill Beau Baggins, and telling him the truth and earning his scorn. Tugging at our heartstrings, McGee elects truth over flattery, professing her true devotion to her father, thus setting him at odds with her. He banishes her, and we hope to see more of McGee’s Cordelia as she tries to win her way back into her father’s good graces. But our hopes, like Cordelia’s, are dashed.
Rather than following Cordelia’s journey as we do the lovers in Midsummer, R&J, or even the farcical Twelfth Night, Shakespeare instead opts to parade before us a gross procession of figures we can’t imagine we could associate ourselves with. The playwright’s less savory notions find a voice in this throng of damnable buffoons. Jerry Jones as Kent and Tony Braxton as Gloucester are two of the only lights in the dark tunnel that is this narrative of degradation, but that’s come to be expected of the two veterans. Another promising performance is that of Edgar, played by P. Michael Jackson, as he carves his way through the mire of a plot-line.
While Shakespeare is no stranger to a sub-plot and he’s shown some agility with maneuvering them before, Lear lacks the fluidity of Romeo & Juliet that you might expect, as it jumps from place to place with no regard for helping the audience to understand the passage of time. At once we are at the castle of Goneril, the lascivious and over-done daughter of Lear—written with a heavy hand and little nuance, and the next we find ourselves at Regan’s castle (she is the other daughter of Lear, and it is hard to distinguish whether we like her character less than Goneril, or if it’s a plodding and self-aware performance by Charlotte O’Dair).
The playwright uses the husbands as set-dressing, trotting out his old trick of placing women at the fore, but the women we meet are detestable. Therefore, we’re left to watch the titular role of Lear bombast his way through excruciatingly indulgent speeches. At the end of the day, after the storm has passed (an unwieldy metaphor which Shakespeare attempts but does not see through), everyone is either dead or miserable, and we lack the pathos and uplift of seeing our Montagues and Capulets seeing the error of their ways or of the frolicking lovers ultimately seeing their wedding days, with all the strange magic undone.
If Lear is an attempt to cast such magic, perhaps it’s less of a spell and more of a curse. Congratulations to the cast and creative team for the hard work they’ve done attempting to breath life into sub-par Bard.
As you might have guessed by now, the goal here has been to illuminate the way this single standard of style for a playwright is unfair. It's not used for any other playwright, but for Williams it is extremely common? Why might that be?
The final post in our triptych of reviews will be after we open our upcoming show The Rose Tattoo! Get your tickets now!
