King Lear
Directed by Michael Grandage
April 7th
On the 7th of April 2011 I went to The Theatre Royal Bath to watch a production of ‘King Lear’, directed by Michael Grandage and starring Derek Jacobi as King Lear. Unfortunately I was sat in the ‘Grand Circle’ – the seats furthest from the stage – and so immediately I was at a disadvantage when watching this performance and at times it was difficult to make-out the facial expressions or gestures of some of the actors. There was however, no such trouble with Derek Jacobi’s performance whose vocal acrobatics were nothing short of astounding. At times he shook the theatre with deep bellows before suddenly squeaking, almost inaudibly, in order to portray Lear’s madness. His gesture and facial expression were also so bold and exaggerated that his unique delivery of Lear was simply unmistakable.
Aside from Jacobi’s performance, I struggled to enjoy the majority of the play; finding many of the actors failing to communicate a story-line which in truth I did not know particularly well. Perhaps their performances were over shadowed by Jacobi, or perhaps it was the misfortune of my seating position, but it seemed to me that many of the actors lacked the enthusiasm in gesture and vocal delivery which I have come to expect from Shakespeare performances.
Another aspect of the production which I didn’t particularly enjoy was the choice of staging, costume and lighting. The entire stage was constructed from pale, worn planks of wood which contrasted with the all-black of the actors costumes. At first, this contradiction was interesting and striking, but as the play carried on and the change of staging which I – and I think most of the audience- was expecting never came, the black and white theme became dull and monotonous. Fortunately Derek Jacobi’s performance was enough to keep my attention and gave the production an element which I was able to enjoy, but on the whole it was not a performance which I particularly enjoyed.
No comments:
Post a Comment