“King Lear”
Where: The Shakespeare Theatre, Sidney Harman Hall, 610 F St. NW
When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday, Sunday; 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday; 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday; 1 p.m. matinee July 1; through July 19
Info: Prices start at $35; discounts available; 202-547-1122; www.shakespeare-theatre.org
Any full-blown production of “King Lear” is a huge undertaking, given its size and scope: friendship, lust, power, impotence, greed, generosity, honesty, dishonesty, to name a few of the issues Shakespeare deals with in this play. The current production at the Shakespeare Theatre seems even larger than most, as it pulls out all the stops to emphasize the darkness and treachery, tenderness and love Shakespeare wrote about so clearly.
Director Robert Falls has set this production in the former Yugoslavia, which was united by a strong leader for 35 years before falling into chaos and civil war. It’s a brilliant choice for this play, since Lear’s charisma is akin to Marshal Tito’s, as is his inability to keep his kingdom from crumbling in a bitter war.
Stacy Keach is magnificent as Lear, at first ebullient as he struts into a noisy restaurant/nightclub where you can almost smell the slivovitz. Drinking and dancing, Keach portrays Lear as an egotistical ruler who expects all his subjects-including his daughters-to tell him what he wants to hear. Trouble ensues when his youngest daughter, Cordelia, will not flatter him.
Keach displays extraordinary range as he explodes at Cordelia, getting to what would seem to be the upper reaches of Lear’s emotional range. But Keach has tremendous reserves: he always seems able to crank up different, intense emotions at a moment’s notice.
The large cast in this “Lear” is superb, from Cordelia (Laura Odeh) to Goneril and Regan (Kim Martin-Cotton and Kate Arrington). Steve Pickering, Edward Gero, Jonno Roberts and Joaqun Torres offer crisply defined portraits of Kent, Gloucester, Edmund and Edgar, respectively. The Fool (Howard Witt) is delightful as he trades philosophical jokes with Lear.
Ana Kuzmanic narrates the story with her costumes, from Lear’s baby-blue suit to his daughters’ gaudy ensembles. Walt Spangler’s set-beginning in that red and gold cabaret and ending in a gray/black, rubble-filled war zone-is full of improbabilities, underscoring the discord and contradictions in Shakespeare’s text: of a king toppled, a united nation pulled apart, a once much-favored man left with nothing.
