King LearBy William Shakespeare
January 10 – February 4, 2007
Margeson TheaterThis epic masterpiece tells the tale of a king whose demand for his daughters’ flattery shatters his kingdom, his family, and his own soul. Lear explores the most basic questions of human existence, destiny, love and duty, friendship and betrayal, leadership and loyalty, the terrors of aging and the overwhelming inevitability of a life nearing its end.
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REVIEWS
A Lear that Hits Home
The Orlando Sentinel
Review by Elizabeth Maupin
At left: (Cordelia (Brittany Morgan) and Lear
(Jonathan Epstein)
When
Jonathan Epstein’s King Lear sits on his throne, his Fool (Jim Ireland)
nestles at his feet like an overgrown puppy. Lear ruffles his Fool’s hair as
he would a devoted grandchild. When the Fool counsels him, Lear listens.
That poignant connection between king and courtier, father figure and son
figure, companions and friends, is at the heart of the Orlando-UCF
Shakespeare Festival’s King Lear, Shakespeare’s most powerful tragedy. Just
as Lear shows that bond with his jester, so too do the actors in this
production connect with their audience. The result is a Lear that hits home
in the most elemental of ways. The festival was right to shy away from Lear for most of its 17-year
history: This play, as Epstein has pointed out, calls out for more than a
few good actors, and it also demands an audience mature enough to hear what
it has to say. But now the festival has built that company. If you can judge
by its reaction on opening night, the festival’s audience is ready for
whatever horror – and whatever compassion – Shakespeare could devise.
All of that and much more is in King Lear, the story of a foolish old man
who demands adulation and then suffers most profoundly when his loved ones
don’t see things his way. Lear is more interested in proving his own
absolute power than in tending to the cares and needs of his fellow men and
women. Only when he is thrust into a world of want can he see other humans
for what they are. It’s a grand, bleak story, told starkly in the festival’s Margeson Theater
by a cast in muted, timeless costumes of browns, burgundies and blacks. The
set consists of a series of bare wooden platforms, all of it overshadowed by
three wooden arches that call to mind no less an image than that of
Golgotha, where Jesus was crucified.
There Lear asks his three daughters to declare their love for him, and there
the two eldest, Goneril and Regan, answer him in superlatives too grand to
be believed. But Cordelia, his favorite, insists on being honest: She knows
that no one can quantify love, and she suffers her father’s instant wrath.
Only when Goneril and Regan take over Lear’s kingdom, and he himself is cast
out into the wilderness, does he begin, much too late, to see what being
human is all about. Director Paul Barnes, an experienced hand at the venerable Oregon
Shakespeare Festival and elsewhere, has led his 18-member ensemble to get to
the heart of Lear’s story, and the outcome is a period-dress production that
feels new. Such actors as Eric Hissom (as the duplicitous Edmund) and Steven
Patterson (as the blunt Kent) are speaking Shakespearean English, of course,
but they speak it so matter-of-factly that it sounds modern and colloquial.
There’s no mistaking what they and their colleagues are saying; better yet,
there’s no mistaking what they mean and what they feel.
Barnes also renders the horror of Lear’s story so plainly that there’s no
ducking its punch. The gore in Shakespeare’s drama can seem almost comical,
like a two-bit production of the lesser drama Titus Andronicus or a stage
rendition of Evil Dead 2. At the Shakespeare Festival, there’s no mistaking
the bloody fate of Gloucester, Lear’s counterpart in age, and the blows that
befall other characters certainly result in blood. But the telling is so
matter-of-fact that it averts melodrama: The blood you see feels real.
There’s good work across the board from the cast members, some of whom are
familiar to festival-goers and some of whom are new to Orlando. Anne Hering
and Catherine Stork make a repugnant pair of sisters as Goneril and Regan –
Hering the more sweetly conniving and Stork the more severe of the two.
Brittany Morgan is a straightforward Cordelia; Christopher Pearson Neiss
makes an honest Albany, husband to Goneril and Stephan Jones finds an
element of smugness in Regan’s husband, the nasty Cornwall.
Patterson, the hardened Cassius in last season’s Julius Caesar, shows the
decency and loyalty in Kent, and Eric Zivot, a glorious Malvolio in 2005’s
Twelfth Night, is moving as old Gloucester, whose story parallels Lear’s
own. David Mann makes a lucid, level-headed Edgar, the son of Gloucester who
disguises himself as a madman to watch over his banished king. Hissom turns
Edmund, Edgar’s bastard brother, into a model of relaxed villainy, and
Ireland is beautifully sweet and clear-sighted as the Fool.
It’s Epstein, though, who holds this production in the palm of his hand:
From the moment his body begins to fail him, his eyes blaze with light.
Epstein’s Lear is an old man afraid of losing everything he has, but afraid
most of all of losing his mind. Still, there’s a will of fire inside him
that keeps him going, even when his wits falter. When he regain his senses –
or gains them, perhaps, for the first time – he’s absolutely grounded,
absolutely sane and wise.
There’s nothing kingly about Epstein’s Lear: He’s just a man, and so are all
his cohorts in this plain-spoken production. No wonder an absolute quiet
among the audience greets this Lear at play’s end. With a story this plain,
all you can do is think – and feel.
Heart-wrenching, dysfunctional drama 'King Lear' packs punch
FLORIDA TODAY
Excerpts from the reviews by Pam Harbaugh
 At
right: the cast of King Lear
There is a sense we have of "King Lear," Shakespeare's
most riveting and poignant tragedy. We know the terrain will be emotionally
rugged and Lear's fate agonizingly brutal. Our hearts ache when Lear learns
too late that the child he spurned, Cordelia, is the only one of his three
daughters who love him.
We picture the desolation, both physical and mental, that Lear enters into,
accompanied only by his Fool, a man so much wiser than the king he serves.
It is a pitiful sight. Indeed, it is all about the emotion.
And to those who understand the drama in advance, the emotion is delivered
at the Orlando-UCF Shakespeare Festival's production, directed by Paul
Barnes, formerly with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland. But if you
have to struggle with the multi-layered plot and wide array of characters,
all informed by individual goals and motivation, your confusion may
interfere with the payoff.
Certainly, the bleak landscape cultivated by pride is palpable from the
beginning, thanks to Bob Phillips' formalistic setting and Eric Haugen's
gloomy lighting.
A wooden platform grows out of craggy rocks and detritus of the earth. It
sweeps up toward a barren landscape. At the end of the platform are three
towering wooden gates at different heights. The symbolism is unmistakable:
They are the three crosses of sacrifice.
It is Lear's selfish pride and his need for love that exact the sacrifice of
his three daughters. Intent on dividing his land among them, he asks which
one loves him the most.
Anne Hering is an icy wonder as daughter Goneril, pursing her lips into
perfect disdain of her father's slovenly troops. Catherine Stork is fiery as
Regan, a bloodthirsty daughter who will stop at nothing to get what she
wants.
Dignified and gentle, Brittany Morgan brings nobility to Cordelia, the
daughter who truly loves her aged father but who is disowned because she
refused to play Lear's game.
Although Lear's prideful demand is one small moment in time, it ends up as
his undoing. Without his family, the symbol of his home, Lear is left, quite
literally, to the elements of an unforgiving nature.
As Lear, Jonathan Epstein is, simply, marvelous. He delivers a powerful,
heart-wrenching portrayal of Lear's descent into "nothing" (a recurring
motif in the first act). When, in the second half, Lear challenges the
coming storm to "Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!" we see him
moving closer to the cliff of his own mental and emotional decay. Dressed in
rags and with a crown of weeds, he sinks closer to earthly elements, where
he is inexorably heading.
His Fool (a fittingly melancholy Jimmy Ireland, who disappears all too
unceremoniously) stays with him. Where he once seemed a pet to scratch
behind the ears, or a playmate with whom to spar, the Fool now protects his
king.
After roaming around the craggy hills, Lear is rescued by Cordelia and
brought back to his senses. But this poignant reconciliation comes too late.
In a parallel story of parent/child betrayal, Edmund tricks his father,
Gloucester, into disowning his legitimate son, Edgar. Later, accused of
treason, Gloucester has his eyes gouged out in a chilling, bloody, mad-dog
scene with Regan and her husband, Cornwall (the talented but underused
Stephen Jones).
A crystal-clear Shakespearean actor, Eric Hissom is at his deliciously evil
best as bad boy Edmund. Eric Zivot and David Mann, as Gloucester and Edgar,
bring a moving tenderness to one of the production's most endearing scenes.
The acting here is top-notch. The visuals and sound are, as always,
splendid....
Above: In back, soldiers (Liam
Schaill, Vanditt Bhatt, Matthew Harris, Blake Logan.
Front - Lear (Jonathan Epstein) and Fool (Jimmy Ireland)
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