King Lear, Chichester Minerva - theatre review

Frank Langella offers a compelling King Lear who teeters perilously between majesty and madness
22 April 2014

The last time we saw American actor Frank Langella on an English stage, he was playing Richard Nixon, a towering figure forced to confess to wrongdoing. He returns now as Lear, another mighty man destroyed by his own folly and once again Langella serves up a memorable performance.

A spot-on English accent, delivered in that trademark gravelly voice, is a fine start as Langella offers a compelling King teetering perilously between majesty and madness. Wide-eyed innocence is interspersed with ferocious railing, as he slides precipitously down the slope of mental fragility, his plight made more piteous by his constant awareness of it.

Many a fine Lear has been scuppered by finding himself stranded in a poor production but there’s no danger of that here. From the opening moment, when the disastrous division of the kingdom is strikingly symbolised by three silver crowns placed on the floor, director Angus Jackson offers a wonderfully fluid and clear path through this hefty narrative of fathers making poor judgment calls about their children. Swiftly, the piece assumes the hurtling momentum of all good tragedy. Harry Melling’s unusually young Fool — an inspired casting choice — has a rich and pleasing vein of melancholy and Goneril (Catherine McCormack) and Regan (Lauren O’Neil) are a notably chilling pair, the latter laughing openly at her father as he gives his “reason not the need” speech.

It’s not a faultless evening. Isabella Laughland’s Cordelia appears to be speaking Shakespeare as a foreign language and Lear’s central scene on the heath doesn’t quite achieve the breakdown into base humanity that is required; indeed the heath itself looks like a poorly-paved patio. Yet this matters little, in a production of heft and impact.

Until November 30 (01243 781312, cft.org.uk)

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