Royal Shakespeare Company’s King Lear at BAM whittles humanity to its essence
Go ahead and start a conversation about a powerful leader who makes impulsive decisions based upon which of his subordinates flatters him best, but don’t specify who it is. Who instantly pops into people’s minds? I know what you’re thinking: the subject of the latest Sunday night drubbing on network television. But you could also be talking about Shakespeare’s King Lear.
Donald Trump isn’t on the menu in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of King Lear, now playing at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. As a matter of fact, Gregory Doran, RSC’s artistic director, said his rendition of Shakespeare’s epic tragedy has little connection with the American president, even if he does share more than a few similarities with the rash, narcissistic tyrant at the center of a play penned at the beginning of the 17th century. Trumpean trappings were grafted onto Shakespearean characters in the Public Theater’s production of Julius Caesar in New York last summer, but Doran said the bluntness of the comparison detracted from Shakespeare’s story and characters. (Arin Arbus, who directed “The Winter’s Tale” around the corner at the Theater for a New Audience, had a similar opinion of a Trump-Shakespearean tyrant connection.)
What Lear does tease out from modern life, Doran said, is a timeless human dynamic: abuse of power. Here we have an ancient story—adapted by Shakespeare from a contemporary play relating the legend of King Leir of Britain—about a king who seeks flattery from his daughters when he’s about to divvy up his estate between the three of them. The two eldest put on their best act and get the lion’s share of his riches and power. The third daughter, his erstwhile favorite, can’t bring herself to embellish her love for him, and is denied her inheritance and banished from his kingdom. Having given away his power, Lear soon finds himself stuck between two daughters who don’t honor him as they said they had. And let’s not forget the subplot between one of Lear’s loyal advisers and his two sons, one born of a wife, the other of a mistress (and not happy about it). As you can imagine, the end result is a grandiose mess, replete with murder, betrayal, eye-gouging and at least one attempt at adultery.