In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • King Lear
  • Peter Kirwan
King Lear
Presented by Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory, at the Tobacco Factory, Bristol. February 9–March 24, 2011. Directed by Andrew Hilton. Associate Director Dominic Power. Set and costume designed by Harriet de Winton. Lighting by Matthew Graham. Sound and Music by Elizabeth Purnell. Fights by John Sandeman. With John Shrapnel (King Lear), Trevor Cooper (Gloucester), Julia Hills (Goneril), Dorothea Myer-Bennett (Regan), Christopher Staines (Edgar), Jack Whitam (Edmund), Eleanor Yates (Cordelia, Servant), Simon Armstrong (Kent), Alan Coveney (Albany), Byron Mondahl [End Page 334] (Cornwall), Paul Brendan (Oswald), Christopher Bianchi (Lear’s Fool), Paul Currier (King of France, Doctor), and John Sandeman (Burgundy).

In 2000, the resident Shakespeare company at Bristol’s Tobacco Factory made its debut with Andrew Hilton’s production of King Lear, welcoming modest local audiences but attracting enthusiasm from a surprised press, who raved about the production’s immediacy and lack of clutter. Twelve years later, the Tobacco Factory’s annual Spring season has become a major event on the UK Shakespearean scene, playing to packed houses and consistently excellent notices. Revisiting the play with which he launched his company, Hilton re-presented Lear in a similarly pared-down but no less powerful production.

The principles of the company changed little between the two Lears. Hilton’s productions continue to prioritize crisp, pacey verse-speaking, rounded characters, and stripped-down visuals. The one concession to conceptualization was the unusual (for this company) choice subtly to update the costumes as the production progressed, moving from robes and gowns suiting the play’s historical setting to more modern variations on leather trenchcoats and combat fatigues, particularly after Cordelia’s return to England. The shift in costume added little to the interpretation, being too subtle to indicate any suggestion of universality but obvious enough to disrupt a sense of fixed historical place. The slippage of period did not cohere with a production that, in all other respects, strove to fix characters within a believable and psychologically nuanced network of relationships.

John Shrapnel’s Lear was established from the start as loving patriarch, entering the playing space arm in arm with Cordelia and laughing at a private shared joke. The intimacy created by the Tobacco Factory’s in-the-round arrangement and low ceiling went some way toward domesticating the drama, emphasizing the importance placed on family. This Lear was kindly and generous, yet stubborn and irascible when challenged. His early laughter at Cordelia’s refusal to participate in the declarations of love turned quickly to indignation and outrage, his voice rising to trample over the objections of others. Lear’s anger always had its roots in moments of provocation and rose naturally out of contestation, but Shrapnel imagined a Lear incapable of exercising restraint or pausing once in flow. His outrage against Goneril in particular began as a legitimate cry against perceived unreasonableness, but the bile and vindictiveness in the curses that developed made his anger seem out of all proportion to the calm environment of the stage. [End Page 335]


Click for larger view
View full resolution
Fig. 9.

John Shrapnel as Lear, Eleanor Yates as Cordelia, and Alan Coveney as Albany in Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory’s 2011 production of King Lear, directed by Andrew Hilton. Photo courtesy of Graham Burke.

[End Page 336]

The early establishment of Lear as a kindly father, however, paved the way for a moving depiction of his vulnerability, particularly once reunited with Eleanor Yates’s Cordelia. Peering at her from a rickety wheelchair, he lifted his trembling body slowly from the chair and arranged himself to kneel, every ounce of effort going into the simple maneuver. The shift, following his scenes on the heath, was that he no longer rose to provocation, instead staying within the kindly, paternal mode that had been glimpsed at the start of the production.

The roundedness of characters, and the creation of stimuli that explained behavior, characterized the rest of the production. Julia Hills’s Goneril and Dorothea Myer-Bennett’s Regan were not evil but defensive, whispering to each other with an urgent and worried concern at first and becoming gradually steelier throughout the production as...

pdf

Share