King Lear, Almeida - review

A lucid and confidently paced production from Michael Attenborough, with Jonathan Pryce bringing a raw passion to one of Shakespeare's most exacting roles
Jonathan Pryce as King Lear, Almeida Theatre. Photo Credit Keith Pattison .jpg
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20 October 2012

Jonathan Pryce brings an impressive mix of tenderness, quivering insecurity and raw passion to his interpretation of one of Shakespeare’s most exacting roles. King Lear is a play of harrowing intensity, and in the lead Pryce savours its apocalyptic language.

Michael Attenborough’s production is lucid, well-spoken and confidently paced (though hardly short). On a fine, forbidding set by Tom Scutt, it feels loaded with imagery of furtiveness and repression – but has a satisfying directness.

Pryce’s Lear is an abusive father, a shaggy tyrant who wants to give up responsibility without renouncing his privileges. When he asks his daughters to declare the extent of their love for him, we sense him teetering on the brink of domestic carnage. Sometimes Shakespeare’s tragedy is treated as having cosmic resonance; here its significance seems more contained and familiar.

As Lear’s vanity is thwarted and he lurches into madness, stumbling dispossessed around his kingdom, Pryce finds notes of seething rage yet also of delicate comedy, and the momentum of his decline is convincing. Even if this is a Lear few people will find sympathetic, he is recognizable and compelling. Pryce’s work is potent, immediate, and detailed without being pernickety.

There’s assured support from Clive Wood as Gloucester, whose blinding is as powerful a scene as ever, and from Trevor Fox as a gruff Fool who fancies himself as a bit of conjurer. Wood’s Gloucester appears weak but not bumbling; Fox’s Fool is a channel for the play’s darker thoughts.

Of Lear’s three daughters it is Zoe Waites who stands out as a savage Goneril. Phoebe Fox’s Cordelia has a glinting, almost petulant quality, a nice alternative to the usual vision of the character as saintly and insipid. Meanwhile Jenny Jules captures the malign militancy of Regan, who vies with Goneril even as she conspires with her. Kieran Bew’s Edmund bristles with masculinity, and Richard Goulding as his abused and ostracized brother Edgar has a touch of loucheness and plenty of spirit but also an air of vulnerability.

This does not strike me as a major production of King Lear – it’s a chamber piece rather than a full-on symphony – and in the final scenes it doesn’t have quite enough weight. But it is a clear-sighted account, and Pryce’s performance is absorbing.

King Lear runs until November 3 (020 7359 4404, almeida.co.uk)

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