Past productions in Malta by the Globe Theatre (London)’s touring company have shown this company’s determination to remind audiences that it strongly stands in the old tradition of touring companies, and that it uses a production style that is not far removed from that of the Elizabethan/Jacobean period.
The plain and sturdy permanent sets they use are modelled on the stage in Shakespeare’s time. Fancy stage lighting is rarely used and many of the sound effects are produced by drums, trumpets and other instruments played by members of the cast or by old-fashioned contraptions like thunder machines.
Some differences are important: the rich and elaborate costumes of 1600 are absent, and of course the acting style mostly stands well away from the artificial and mannered acting of that time.
A strong performance by Joseph Marcell as Lear, and an honest and fearfully outspoken Kent played by Bill Nash
Three years ago, Globe Theatre gave us a Hamlet, directed by Dominic Dromgoole, that was strong on delivering an exciting plot. This year, Bill Buckhurst’s direction of that most magnificent of all tragedies, King Lear (held at Pjazza Teatru Rjal), is based on a strong performance by Joseph Marcell as Lear, and an honest and fearfully outspoken Kent played by Bill Nash.
This is not the fearfully dark tragedy some of us have seen once or twice in the past, and indeed Buckhurst is probably trying to depict through the characters the banality rather than the horror of evil.
His Goneril (Gwendolen Chatfield) and Regan (Shamaya Rafaat) smile, move and often speak like very confident society women. When, for instance, Goneril says of Gloucester “Take out his eyes”, it is as if this thought has just occurred to her and that she does not expect anyone to act on it.
Even the actual blinding of Gloucester by Regan (using a stiletto heel) and Cornwall (Alex Mugnaioni) is not terrifying: the two seem to be playing a game that has gone over the top.
The only character in whose profoundly evil nature I could really believe was Daniel Pirrie’s Edmund. Not that Pirrie’s acting shows any special subtlety. His face is mostly expressionless and even his words are rarely emphatic or nuanced, but they have a frightening intensity.
The direction relies on the long series of magnificent speeches by Lear, and a few by Gloucester. These imprint in the audience’s consciousness a picture of a world in which injustice, infidelity and cruelty bring so much misery to so many people. The plight of poor, suffering people having none of life’s comforts, not even a roof under which to shelter from a storm, shocks the old king.
For the first time, he experiences what it means to be driven out by his daughters and denied shelter from the great storm which is at the heart of the play. Technically, the storm on the heath is the most powerful in the production. It is created by means of crashing and thunder effects, but mostly by having Lear deliver his tremendous speeches about man’s hideous failings and about the injustice suffered by the weak in society against a large red curtain that moves, flutters incessantly, mirroring both the fury of the storm and the emotional tempest in Lear himself.
Marcell’s strong voice rises above the noise of the storm, penetrating the audience’s ears with the urgency of his horror-filled tones.
Marcell and the director do not fall into the trap of creating a monotony of high vocal volume. Indeed, Marcell uses the whole gamut of tones as the play develops, starting with the restraint of the opening scene, a restraint broken only in his outburst against Cordelia.
He uses fortissimo in his first hostile encounter with Goneril when he calls down his amazingly cruel curses on her fertility. But in this scene and in the following one with Regan, his intimations of approaching insanity bring a quaver to his voice, and only rarely does he go vocally over the top.
Following the vocal peaks in the storm scene, and his memorable description, (suggested by the sight of Edgar’s near-nakedness as he pretends to be the mad Tom) of him as “unaccommodated man... such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art”, Lear becomes more meditative, racked by his guilt of having been a bad king.
In the scene with the blind Gloucester, he is bitter about men and especially women. It is a moving scene between two tragic, ill-used old men, Lear and Gloucester (another outstanding performance, this by John Stahl who also plays a well-contrasted Albany) in which Lear begins to betray a trace of emotional softness.
It is, however, in his great scene with Cordelia that we see a truly new Lear. Now, his guilt is not just for having misgoverned his country but for having misjudged and badly treated his loving daughter. Had Bethan Cullinane’s Cordelia been more emotionally overwhelmed in this scene, it might have moved me as much as this scene has often done.
Cullinane is more successful as Lear’s Fool, whose wisdom is contrasted again and again with Lear’s lack of it. Apart from playing Cornwall, Alex Mugnaioni is an interesting Edgar. The part requires much versatility, starting off as the bookish and easily-duped brother of the wicked Edmund and later pretending to be a Bedlam beggar possessed by evil spirits in the storm scenes. He then goes on to become the loving son who leads Gloucester to safety, and finally the brave swordsman who kills Edmund, a redoubtable warrior.
The above should have revealed there is a good amount of doubling of parts in this production. This can lead, as in one case, to a ludicrous situation in a scene between Goneril, Edmund and the detestable Oswald, both parts played by Daniel Pirrie. Here, which Pirrie assumes one role standing in one side of the stage and then dashes over to the opposite side to assume the other.
The costumes are mainly contemporary, with some robes harking back to the middle ages. The play is introduced by accordion and sung music in which the audience is invited to join, and at the end the dead Lear rises to join his fellow cast members in a music and dance. The audience is being reminded that the sorrows and deaths it has just seen are merely make-believe. Why go home harbouring sad thoughts?