Battle of the Lears: ‘King Lear’ (1983) dir. Michael Elliott

Tags

English Renaissance, King Lear, King Richard II, maps, Queen Elizabeth I, Shakespeare, Stonehenge, superbody

The DVD’s main attraction is Sir Laurence Olivier’s Emmy award winning performance as the insufferable King. However, director Michael Elliott’s vivid recreation of Lear’s Medieval polytheist world (complete with appropriate outfits that History of Costume could explain) provides Olivier with an authentic space for his commanding role. The opening outdoor scene presents a Stonehenge setting in which Lear throws down a large rug-like map on the ground. He then steps on it not only in a display of regal power, but to invite

Battle of the Lears: ‘King Lear’ (1982) dir. Jonathan Miller

Tags

English Renaissance, King Lear, maps, Ptolemy, Queen Elizabeth I, Shakespeare

Directed by Jonathan Miller in 1982, King Lear is part of the BBC’s project to film all of Shakespeare’s plays. It is performed as though on a theatre stage with minimum props. At Lear’s court, the players are attired in black Jacobean costumes that reflect the king’s ‘darker purpose’ (I.i, line 35). Though Cordelia wears a white headdress and shawl to indicate her purity. The overall effect is that the court is aggressively banal with nasty schemes being hatched in a disturbingly calm and superficial space. Even the characters speak in the same moderate tone, a featureless wall Michael Hordern as the frustrated Lear can only rail against.

Amidst this trite behaviour, the Fool supposedly provides witty relief as he satirises Lear’s decision to handover his kingdom to his two eldest daughters. However, Frank Middlemass is a lifeless Fool who delivers his lines perfunctorily. The sharp-tongued exchanges Shakespeare wrote for the king and Fool become

Battle of the Lears

Tags

bbc adaptations, Edmund Spenser, English Renaissance, ian mckellen, Shakespeare, shakespearian plays

King Lear and Fool in a Storm

I have noticed that Shakespeare’s King Lear (1606) has been filmed a number of times in recent years (1982-2008). These filmed adaptations also feature British actors as the eponymous king. Perhaps one reason is that playing King Lear is the ‘everest every Shakespearean actor must climb to be labelled great’, as the sleeve text to the 2008 DVD version of King Lear, directed by Trevor Nunn and starring Ian McKellen boldly states. Does the role of King Lear present a considerable and distinctly British challenge to aging actors, or is there a sense that King Lear is the last great British role that an old actor must perform before dying? In this context, King Lear permeates the seemingly universal idea that Shakespeare’s plays are the preserve of an intellectual elite registering a quality performers must aspire to. What is the point of having a great play if no one can breathe life into the characters as Shakespeare wrote them? It is no surprise that the five King Lear DVDs I intend to watch are all around three hours in length – watching the play requires as much stamina and perservance as performing it. In this sense, ‘King Lear gives one the impression of a high mountain that everyone admires, yet no one particularly wishes to climb’ (Kott 100). The implication is that the reader/spectator must regard great art as a masochistic and time-consuming pleasure.

However, King Lear does not have to be a painful viewing experience. Charles Marowitz’s response