King Lear review for The Ark

King Lear – Still Here, Still a Riddle
On opening night of Shakespeare’s King Lear, the play’s director, Robert Currier, told the audience that Lear was “the most immense play I’ve ever directed.” Certainly, it follows through with its advance billing.
This tragedy is large. It’s also heavy and dark, a mirror image of all that is right and honorable. Created between two other royal tragedies, Othello and Macbeth, King Lear has been called a Doomsday play, an Apocalypse, a Last Judgment. It’s a nonstop maelstrom of treachery, plots, betrayals, and viciousness – much of it among family members – and no justice in the outcome. What was Shakespeare’s message?
As the play begins, the old king – instead of expanding his kingdom by his daughters’ marriages – is instead preparing to divide it among them, demanding to know how much they love him as he draws the divisions on a map. Displeased with the honest daughter’s answer, Lear swiftly disinherits her, then awards the lying daughters half a kingdom each. The Earl of Kent, Lear’s faithful follower (he’s been compared to the king’s guard dog,) speaks up against this injustice; he, too, is banished. All the while, Edmund, the Earl of Gloucester’s illegitimate son, is plotting revenge against both his father and his legitimate brother. Things go downhill from here.
Cordelia, the good daughter, is banished too, and leaves to become Queen of France. The bad daughters, Goneril and Regan, complain about having to house their dad and his large retinue and show their discontent with bad service and late mealtimes. Lear’s Fool advises the king, “Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise,” and the loyal Kent, returning disguised as a servant, continues to look after the king who banished him. Kent tells Oswald, Regan’s uppity servant, that he’d like to beat him into mortar “and daub the privy with it,” so Regan has Kent put in the stocks. Seeing his servant treated this way, Lear is enraged and, rather than endure any more attitude from his ungrateful daughters, takes the disguised Kent and the Fool and flees into the storm. Here he soon loses his wits.
It’s a desolate play, and as it moves into its second half (three hours altogether,) any hope for a satisfying resolution is killed off. The good guys all take a hit; so do the bad guys. The Fool has the most wisdom and the best lines, but even the Fool is a casualty.
This dark drama is being led by Barry Kraft, a long-term veteran of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, in the title role. Kraft also helped design the production of this play. He gives a polished performance, shading his portrayal of the king from wheedling to raving to resigned.
Matthew Henerson is the acerbic, untouchable Fool. Cat Thompson and Mary Knoll portray the calculating sisters, Regan and Goneril, while LeAnne Rumbel plays the honest Cordelia. Marin Shakespeare regulars, Darren Bridgett and George Maguire become polar opposites as the wicked Edmund and the loyal Kent; Michael Wiles appears as Edgar, Gloucester’s legal son, also disguised as Poor Tom, the mad beggar. Billlie Cox and Ellen Brooks provide lights and sound for the necessary thunderstorm.
But almost as mysterious as Shakespeare’s motives for writing King Lear are these puzzles left in its staging: why the Japanese theme, with Bruce Lackovic’s shoji-screened set and Abra Berman’s Shogun warrior costumes? Why does the Fool (who appears to be lame throughout) exaggerate his exit with a hip-wiggling dance? Why are the actors in the storm not cowering from its fury?
But the greatest riddle, the playwright’s intent, four hundred years later is still unresolved.
Marin Shakespeare Company will present King Lear at the Forest Meadows Amphitheatre on the Dominican campus in San Rafael in repertory with Alice in Wonderland through August 20. Free parking is available, and the amphitheatre opens an hour before performance time for picnicking. Warm clothing is advised for evening. For complete information and ticket prices, call 499-4488 or see www.marinshakespeare.org.