Christmas seems an odd time to be staging the most tragic, the most painful, the most awesome and the most pagan of Shakespeare’s plays. The cruelty is graphic, both in action and language. Is there anything more horrific on the stage than the blinding of Gloucester’s eyes? Is there anything more revolting than Lear’s tirades against his eldest daughters? (If Goneril and Regan are monsters it is because he has made them so.) Evil triumphs. Would you, in the circumstances, perhaps, prefer to see Nahum Tate’s adaptation, which held the stage from 1681 to 1838, and which ended with Lear still alive and Cordelia and Edgar getting married and living happily ever after?
The set is simple: a bare stage surrounded by a stockade of high wooden planks daubed with dirt which also encompasses the whole auditorium. Michael Grandage’s minimalist, concentrated production inevitably lacks epic sweep; but it is strong on lucidity, pace and sound effects; though for so dark a play the lighting is surprisingly bright.
Lear is 70; but actors, who wait until they are 70, as Laurence Olivier did on television, usually just don’t have the strength. Olivier was actually 76. Macready was 45, Gielgud, who played Lear four times, was at his best when he was 36, Wolfit was 42, Scofield was 40, Eric Porter was 40, Sinden was 53, Michael Gambon was 43, Holm was 63, McKellen was 68.
Derek Jacobi is 72 and seems one of the youngest. His performance, apart from one or two irritating moments of campness, is impressive in its authority, power, and command of the verse. The tirades and howls are magnificent. The madness and especially the final moments with the dead Cordelia are very moving. There is admirable support from Paul Jeeson as Gloucester.