KING LEAR. To 14 October.

London

KING LEAR
by William Shakespeare translated by Dina Dodina

Maly Drama Theatre of St Petersburg Barbican Centre London to 14 October 2006
(Performed in Russian with English supertitles)
Tue-Sat 7.15pm
Runs 2hr 55min One interval

TICKETS: 0845 121 6823
www.barbican.org.uk/bite
Review: Timothy Ramsden 10 October

Vivid, unexpected Lear.
Maly director Lev Dodin admits his company’s Lear, Petr Semak, is younger than most. It’s key to the production. When maddened Lear declares Poor Tom must be suffering from his daughters (to be told, “He has no daughters”) the middle-aged ex-monarch seems as self-absorbed as in his regal days.

Not that he was ever very regal. Dodin’s court (on fold-up chairs carried by Earls themselves) stops mid-conversation as Lear approaches. Yet he shambles on, uninterested, through the audience. It takes Cordelia’s disruption of the spectacle of the 3 daughters, lined-up prepared to answer their father’s question, to stir him. Meanwhile, the enigmatic Fool is angry from the start, his jaunty mix of tunes and crashing discords on a player-piano bringing silent cinema’s comedy and melodrama to the action.

Dodin believes this is an age for a personal, not political, focus. Lear has no grand moments. The second part begins shortly before “Blow winds, and crack your cheeks.” The famous words arrive unannounced, from a confused Lear rather than as a challenge to the heavens. His final journey is in silhouette against white, forceful lighting emphasising David Borovsky’s black-and-white set, with its three huge wooden cross-pieces upstage, featuring otherwise just 2 groups of stalls, pulled on for confined settings.

Despite this, Dodin doesn’t go for stark moral contrasts. There seems genuine affection as Regan runs to greet her arriving father, till she realises why he’s turned up. Goneril and Regan keep exchanging stares with Edmund, growing gradually, genuinely fonder of him each time. Their pure white clothing is the image Lear imagines of them in the ‘trial’ scene. These daughters are human rather than monsters. Memory, or the possibility, of happier times is glimpsed in delirium, as Lear imagines dancing with them just before the end.

Dodin writes of not finishing his production, and later scenes, as France and Cordelia battle Edmund’s native forces, are cut. Gloucester’s blinding begins a series of blackouts, creating a disoriented world where each new sight shows a tumbling transformation: Edmund with Goneril then Regan, Lear suddenly lying alongside the dead Cordelia, resigned rather than illuminated.

Lear: Petr Semak
King of France: Igor Ivanov
Duke of Burgundy: Alexey Zubarev
Duke of Cornwall: Sergey Vlasov
Duke of Albany: Anatoly Kolibyanov
Earl of Kent: Sergey Kozyrev
Eaerl of Gloucester: Sergey Kuryshev
Edgar: Danila Kozlovskiy
Edmund: Vladimir Seleznev
Fool: Alexey Devotchenko
Oswald: Oleg Dmitriev
Servant: Vladimir Zakharyev
Goneril: Elizaveta Boyarskaya
Regan: Elena Solomonova
Cordelia: Daria Rumyantseva

Director: Lev Dodin
Designer/Costume: David Borovsky
Lighting: Ekaterina Dorofeeva, Vitaliy Skorodumov
Sound: Yury Vavilov
Assistant director: Valery Galendeev

2006-10-13 08:41:10