22 January 2014
A croaky start to the new King Lear at the National. At the interval of its preview performance last night, director Sam Mendes came on stage to apologise. He announced that Sam Troughton — the actor playing Edmund the villain — had lost his voice and would have to stand down.
His understudy, Paapa Essiedu, rose to the challenge to replace him but could not mask his strikingly dissimilar appearance. The pre-interval Edmund was white, the post-interval Edmund black. “O, the difference of man and man!” cried Edmund’s lover Goneril of her new Edmund, to peals of mirth from cast and audience alike.
