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James Callachran and Andrew Cleaver |
Reducing Lear's role is not such a bad
reversal
EDMOND, THE BASTARD
Theatro Technis by Tom Foot
THEATRO Technis stalwart owner George Eugenio has taken Shakespeare’s
King Lear and turned it on its head.
He has elevated the subplot between Edgar, Edmund and Gloucester,
relegating Lear, Cordelia and The Fool to all but nothing.
The bastard son Edmund (Dean Tunkara) – Eugenio casts a
black actor in a white world to emphasise his isolation –
becomes the protagonist.
The result is a spirited 70-minute race through Shakespeare’s
four-hour tragedy.
Some of the lines lose their potency in the rush, and the musical
interludes – which at times sounded like someone was losing
at Gameboy Tetris backstage – did not bring a sense of
occasion.
But the production – the first of its kind in Britain –
hit the right note in other ways.
In choosing Albany’s lines, “the weight of this sad
time we must obey, speak what we feel, not what we ought to
say,” to front his programme notes, Mr Eugenio has got
right to the heart of the script.
Up until the 1960s Lear was read as a religious parable, hammering
home Christian ideals of divine justice: that life will work
out for those who are good and the bad will always “taste
the cup of their deservings”.
But since then directors began to notice a different message.
Shakespeare makes the aristocracy experience destitution, poverty,
alienation, and, in doing so, shows how their “wits begin
to turn”.
The question that follows is how do you get people in high places
to act against discrimination if they have not experienced it
themselves?
Lear calls for “pomp” to expose itself to “feel
what wretches feel.” But it is the eyeless Gloucester,
excellently played by James Callachran – especially when
in tandem with Poor Tom (Andrew Cleaver) in his peak of madness
– who holds a more practical and revolutionary answer:
make them feel.
Until March 3
020 7387 6617 |
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