King for a Day

A friend of mine is stage managing two of the five shows in this summer's Colorado Shakespeare Festival up in Boulder. I'll be going to see her two productions over the next week. But before that, both of us had an interest in one of the other three productions running in rep right now, and with her busy schedule, tonight was basically the one chance for both of us to go and see it -- King Lear.

We both read King Lear for the first time back in high school with the rather flighty and slightly nutty, but smart and totally awesome teacher that got us both turned on to Shakespeare in the first place. I'm not sure I'd call it one of my "favorite" of Shakespeare's plays, but it is certainly one of the plays I know best. And starring in the title role of this production was a Denver local actor, John Hutton, who we've seen in various shows dating back all the way to when we first read the play. We were both eager to see his take on the role.

Lear is a tough play to analyze in terms of its entertainment value. The logic of it all is... well, let's be polite and say it's "strained," to say the least. Never mind the trappings of many Shakespeare plots, like disguised identities. (A father somehow unable to recognize the adult son he's seen constantly all his life; a king unable to recognize the years-loyal servant he just dismissed from his service the day before.) There is some true insanity in this play, and I'm not talking about one character actually going mad and another feigning madness. I mean characters acting against character, without reason.

The play opens with Lear disowning the daughter who is said to have been his "favorite" all his life. (Well... okay, you could call that a symptom of his coming madness.) We soon follow up with a father taking one son's word that his other son intends to murder him, with only the slimmest evidence and no other corroboration. The same lying son is then able to convince his brother to flee into hiding from his father without the father ever actually doing or saying anything threatening. And then this same crafty villain spontaneously recants his wickedness at the end of the play! What's more, important story points at the climax of the play happen off-stage, including major arrests and two suicides. King Lear just doesn't flow as smoothly as many of Shakespeare's other works.

But if you can somehow gloss over that and just take each scene for what it is, the emotional content of it is among the most powerful in Shakespeare. The emotions are weighty. The lows for the characters are low indeed, and the fall quite long from where then fallen begin.

And the language is some of the Bard's very best. I suspect that even someone who has no idea what iambic pentameter is will feel the difference in speaking patterns between different characters in the show. That ambitious villain I mentioned, Edmund, has some of the most bile-filled, hateful poetry you'll see outside of Iago (in Othello), and his punchy, caustic meter stands in stark contrast to everything else going on in the play. He makes the audience take notice of him.

Which bridges me to the actors in this particular performance. This Edmund (Geoffrey Kent) made the most of a delicious role, and his brother Edgar (Josh Robinson) also performed admirably in a part that demands some pretty wild fluctuations in energy and tone. Lear's wicked daughters Goneril (Karyn Casl) and Regan (Karen Slack) were perfect heels, and also managed to find several great moments of wit too.

And then, of course, the man we came to see, John Hutton as Lear. I think I'd forgotten what "heavy lifting" this role is. The character of Lear is out of his mind (even before he actually goes out of his mind), and yet must appear irrational and harsh without just stomping around in a one-tone rage for the entire play. Hutton modulated this admirably, and even managed to make the man sympathetic when a) it kind of feels to me like he gets what's coming to him; and b) it's a Shakespeare tragedy, so you know from word one that he's going to get what's coming to him.

So in all, it was a great night at the theater. And I'm eagerly looking forward to the next two shows, which my friend actually has a hand in.