LEAR. To 2 April.
Sheffield
LEAR
by Edward Bond
Crucible Theatre To 2 April 2005
Tue-Sat 7.30pm Mat 23,26 March, 2 April
Audio-described/BSL Signed/Talkback 24 March (+Touch Tour 6pm)
Pre-show Talk 22 March 6pm
Young People's Performance (£5 for 16-26s) 16 March
Runs 2hr 45min Two intervals
TICKETS: 0114 249 6000
www.sheffieldtheatres.co/uk/buyit
Review: Timothy Ramsden
Bold, perceptive staging of an uncomfortable play of blinding power.Major plays reflect their time without being bound to it, picking up new relevance with passing years. In Edward Bond's 1971 Lear a wall is being built to protect against invasion. This image of destructive power, of fortress become prison, now zooms towards Palestine, taking in hot-off-the-press reference to British anti-terror legislation.
Promises of freedom and peace are eternal in politicians' mouths as their armies imprison and kill. Among Lear's treacherous daughters power brings pleasure to glamorous Fontanelle while practical Bodice calmly knits, outdoing the guillotine-loving French Revolutionaries in the use she finds for her needles.
When lost, power leaves a vacuum of pleading and fear. And it sucks up the intelligence in society, seen in Robert East's careerist professionals, notably the doctor whose eye-gouging contraption is accompanied by soft-spoken This may hurt a little' tones. A startling scene, it curtly summarises the brutality of morally neutral' science applied to political ends.
The Crucible's bold expanse allows an epic sense unavailable in either the Royal Court (where Lear premiered) or the RSC's studio revival. Covered with soil in Dick Bird's set, with scaffolded platform, the stage retains a sense of the wall as building-site throughout. Fully revealed only at the end, when Lear's realised its futility, this wall marks the change between the authoritarian ruler of the opening, executing a worker pour encourager les autres and the final, physically blind figure trying to tear down the grand work of his morally blind reign.
The staging finds room for a quiet corner of rural peace, forever invaded. It's here the countrywoman Cordelia becomes politically conscious after being raped and seeing her husband killed (his ghost stands in for the conscience-pricking Fool of Shakespeare's Lear). Contrastingly, dead centre there's a pit for imprisonment and torture.
At the fine cast's centre is Ian McDiarmid's Lear, explosive in power, morally bitter in defeat, catching the script's hard-edged crystalline poetry. His mastery of the instant vocal double-take is finely exploited in a spell-binding performance which glues together the epic tramp of armies and disposal of bodies in Kent's masterly revival of a shockingly ever-relevant play.
Bodice: Claudia Blakley
1st Workman/Soldier F/Stranger/Pete/Bishop/Old Prison Orderly: David Cardy
Foreman/Soldier E,H,K/Farmer/John: Tim Chipping
The Gravedigger's Boy: Bryan Dick
Old Councillor/Prisoner 4: Robert East
Warrington/Judge: Patrick Godfrey
Ben/Wounded Rebel Soldier/Guard/and Workman/Prisoner 3: Robert Hastie
Firing Squad Officer/Carpenter: Aaron McCusker
Lear: Ian McDiarmid
Farmer's Wife/Prisoner 2: Stella Madden
Engineer/Prison Commandant/Soldier D,I/Officer/Old Sailor: Michael Melia
Farmer's Son/Lewis/Clerk/3rd Workman/Bodice's Aide/Soldier B,P: David Nicolle
Gravedigger's Boy's Wife: Georgina Rich
North/Small Man/Soldier O: David Sibley
Fontanelle: Sharon Small
Soldier/Soldier A,G,J,N,R/Sergeant: Sam Spruell
Cornwall/Thomas/Soldier M: Richard Trinder
Susan/Rebel Soldier: Kate Webster
Director: Jonathan Kent
Designer: Dick Bird
Lighting: Tim Mitchell
Sound: Adam Cork
Assistant director: Dominic Leclerc
2005-03-17 07:48:29