King Lear

A decade later Laurence Olivier played Lear at the Old Vic as “a whimsical old tyrant who takes this way of dividing his kingdom simply as a jest, until the joke turns serious because Cordelia refuses to play.”¹⁵ His performance was not to all tastes but Alec Guinness as the Fool was widely praised. Sir Donald Wolfit, an old-style actor-manager, toured his own production between 1947 and 1953—Ronald Harwood’s experience as Wolfit’s backstage dresser inspired his play The Dresser (1980).

Gielgud played Lear for a third time in 1950, in a production which he co-directed with Anthony Quayle. Although his performance had developed in a number of ways, it was still largely influenced by his work with Granville Barker. He played the part again in 1955 in a production directed by George Devine and designed by Isamu Noguchi. This time Gielgud aimed for psychological realism in his performance but it was generally agreed that while the stylized set worked, the heavy costumes were problematic.

4. John Gielgud as Lear in the hovel (1950 production), with Fool and Poor Tom in the foreground, the disguised Kent behind.

In 1956 Orson Welles directed and starred in a production at the New York City Center. Falling and breaking one ankle and spraining the other during rehearsals, Welles, undeterred, played the part in a wheelchair, pushed around by the Fool. In 1959 Charles Laughton played Lear in a production at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, directed by Glen Byam Shaw. Critics were divided, especially about Laughton’s conception of the role. One of them, Alan Brien, complained that Laughton developed “from boyishness to senility without even an intervening glimpse of maturity.”¹⁶

Three years later Peter Brook directed his groundbreaking production starring Paul Scofield (discussed in detail below). There have been numerous distinguished productions since: in 1968 Trevor Nunn directed with Eric Porter playing Lear; in 1974 Buzz Goodbody directed a pared-down version for the RSC’s small studio theater, The Other Place; in 1976 Trevor Nunn directed Donald Sinden as Lear; in 1979 Peter Ustinov played Lear in a production directed by Robin Phillips at Stratford, Ontario; Adrian Noble’s 1982 production with Michael Gambon is discussed below. In 1989 Jonathan Miller directed Eric Porter at the Old Vic; 1990 saw the Renaissance Theatre company’s production, directed by Kenneth Branagh with Richard Briers as Lear and Emma Thompson as the Fool; in the same year Nicholas Hytner directed John Wood at Stratford; in 1993 Noble directed the play at Stratford again, this time with Robert Stephens as Lear (discussed below). In 1997 in the (London) National’s intimate Cottesloe studio, Richard Eyre directed a production (his swan-song as artistic director) with Ian Holm playing Lear—a highly acclaimed production that was later recorded for television; in the same year Peter Hall directed Alan Howard at the Old Vic; and in 1999 Yukio Ninagawa directed Nigel Hawthorne for the RSC; in 2001 Julian Glover played Lear in Barry Kyle’s production at the Globe and the following year Jonathan Kent directed Oliver Ford-Davies at the Almeida, a performance much admired for its intelligence; Jonathan Miller again directed the play, this time for the 2002 Stratford Festival, Ontario, with Christopher Plummer in the lead; in 2004 Bill Alexander directed Corin Redgrave in a production that used a full conflated text and ran for nearly four hours; in 2007 the RSC’s Complete Works Festival in which all Shakespeare’s plays were performed closed with Trevor Nunn’s production at the Courtyard Theatre with Ian McKellen as King Lear (see interview with Nunn, below). Powerful small-scale productions include a touring one by Kaboodle Theatre Company (1991–94), which made very strong use of a mix of Oriental-imperial costumes and modernity (a feisty Cordelia in Doc Martens boots).

The tradition of adapting the play has been continued in the theater with versions such as Edward Bond’s radical rewriting, Lear (1972) and the Women’s Theatre Group and Elaine Feinstein’s feminist Lear’s Daughters, as well as Jane Smiley’s novel, A Thousand Acres (1997). On film, there were early silent versions in America and Italy (1909–10). A number of stage productions have been filmed, including Peter Brook’s, shot in a stark black-and-white style that intensified the existential bleakness of his stage version. Grigori Kozintsev (1970) produced a beautiful, deeply moving version featuring the sufferings of Russian peasants. It was based on a translation by Boris Pasternak and used haunting music by Dmitri Shostakovich. Akira Kurosawa’s Ran (1985), set in feudal Japan, substantially reworked Shakespeare’s play so as to eliminate Gloucester but incorporate the subplot material in a version in which Lear’s daughters become his married sons. It played a major part in stimulating renewed western interest in epic eastern cinema.

AT THE RSC