King Lear by Royal National Theatre (review)

The long-awaited King Learat the National Theatre had all the hallmarks of Sam Mendes’s best Shakespearean work: from the scenic trappings of anglepoise lamps and creative locations for scenes that provide a fresh context for the action to the presence of Simon Russell Beale in the leading role. There were also apparent homages to the outgoing artistic director of the NT, Nicholas Hytner, and his production of the play in 1990 at the RSC, the same season Mendes began his decades-long collaboration with Beale with Troilus and Cressida. The sheathes of wheat that appeared in the second half were identical in placement and design to those used in Hytner’s Lear, to name but one example.

Mendes’s version—like Hytner’s before him—was resolutely present-day without a hint of the eclecticism that was common in Mendes’s early Shakespeares. Some could argue that the production was not novel or groundbreaking—and some, indeed, clearly did. Social media reaction to the NT Live broadcast of the production on 1 May (by which date I had seen the show in the Olivier three times) noted the feeling of being “underwhelmed” by the relayed event, particularly by the acting. Aware that much commentary surrounding this high-profile production will undoubtedly focus on directorial intent, and spurred on by the negative reactions I have encountered online, I will focus here on the rich detail to be found within the performances.

Shakespeares staged by Mendes have nearly always had a forensic quality about them (the final three productions in the Bridge Project excepted), in which emotional detail both emerges within the lines and fills the space between them through actors’ engagements with other characters and the environment they inhabit. In Mendes’s 2009 The Winter’s Tale, for instance, Simon Russell Beale’s Leontes clutched a brandy glass as he discreetly discussed the fate of Polixenes with Camillo. Beale’s long glance at the liquid that Leontes was swirling around as he said “bespice a cup” became the physical embodiment of the words and provided a clear indication that this oblique passage signaled the assassination of Polixenes by Leontes, as though the latter were a Borgia. The moment filled the stage with heightened tension through a simple action performed between the lines.

In Mendes’s King Lear, this filling of the space with unspoken emotional resonance was embedded in the performances of Simon Russell Beale as Lear and Adrian Scarborough as the Fool even before Lear had spoken his first line. As the lights in the auditorium went down, Scarborough entered via the central stalls stairs and placed a stool on the vomitorium that jutted into the audience at stage level. There he sat with his back to the stage, facing the audience deep in contemplation. As Lear entered with his large retinue (thirty male extras populated the stage throughout Lear’s first scenes), the Fool stood up and turned around to face the stage—and Lear. As the King rounded the stage right corner of the tables, he saw the Fool standing in his eye-line, directly behind the chair that had been placed on the downstage center edge of the stage (from which Lear would hold court, facing upstage). There followed a pause in which the stillness of the two men spoke volumes about the decision Lear had made to...