King Lear (review)

The announcement of the indefinite closure of theaters worldwide in March 2020 led to several big-name theaters around the globe making their previously filmed content available online, in many cases free of charge. Whilst most opted for a series of discrete screenings, Stratford Festival went one step further by curating "StratFest@Home"—a series of twelve "watch parties" streamed free on their YouTube channel. As well as a screening of a previously filmed Stratford Festival production, each watch party offered additional live content before and after the "premiere" of each film, including interviews and Q&A sessions with cast members and directors. Joan Tosoni's 2015 filmed version of Antoni Cimolino's 2014 production of King Learwas selected as the first of the twelve, with a Zoom-facilitated conversation between Cimolino and his Lear, Colm Feore, taking place half an hour before the screening of the film.

Even before considering the global pandemic which took hold this year, 2014 feels like a considerably different place looking back from where humanity is now. A world before most of us had heard of social distancing, before the election of President Trump, before Brexit. It is intriguing therefore that, in making the film of Cimolino's production of Learavailable, Stratford Festival chose to emphasize its resonance with our 2020 world. In an article for The Globe and Mailpublished in the run-up to the event, Cimolino suggested that Lear"seems almost prophetic" in its depiction of "not only the breakdown of an old king … but also the disruption of an entire country" (Cimolino, 2020). Interesting also was Stratford Festival's choice to curate its filmed content together under what Cimolino in his introduction to the screening described as "distinct themes that have something to say to the world that we live in today." Learwas the first of three productions released under the banner of "Social Order and Leadership," followed by Coriolanus(2017, directed by Barry Avrich and Robert Lepage) and Macbeth(2017, directed by Shelagh O'Brien and Antoni Cimolino).

The chosen theme came out further in the pre-film conversation between Cimolino and Feore. The actor reflected on his portrayal of the king as an aging warrior, spurred on by Lear's reference to his "good biting falchion" (5.3.274) when thinking back to his youth. Considering the grouping of Lear, Coriolanus, and Macbethtogether, Cimolino suggested that "Shakespeare seems to want to examine what happens when we put a warrior in a leadership position" and "how … they manage in a civil society"—to which Feore responded that "generally they manage very badly." Cimolino drew out the contemporary parallels further, suggesting that "we are finding today that some people have been elected into leadership positions for all sorts of different reasons, but empathy, compassion, vision, leadership, aren't their thing." Feore compounded this further, citing historical US presidents as examples of great leaders in times of crisis, and stating: "we need intelligent philosopher kings for guidance; we can't have cretinous buffoons—it just doesn't work." Despite the production having been performed two years before Trump's inauguration, the pre-show conversation repositioned Cimolino's Learfirmly (albeit without mentioning Trump by name) as a critique of the current US president's time in office.

In truth, the anti-Trump messaging of the pre-show neither fitted the production nor felt necessary. Cimolino's Learwas distinctly traditional in its aesthetic: the cast wore costumes inspired by the early modern period, whilst the candlelit wood-paneled staging felt evocative of Jacobean indoor playhouses. Even before considering that it was staged and filmed in a pre-COVID-19 world, this is a production that was always firmly