Royal treatment

SFGT's energetic and excellent King Lear

by Bill Rodriguez

KING LEAR. By William Shakespeare. Directed by Fred Sullivan Jr. With Sam Babbitt, J.P. Cottam, Nigel Gore, Jeanine Kane, Kate Lohman, Mauro Hantman, and Normand Beauregard. At the Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre through July 26.

Like apprentice royalty, the tragedy King Lear has the potential to be great, a thunderous, walloping piece of theater. For all of its flaws of craftsmanship, the play comes across as though Shakespeare is tugging at our sleeve like the old wedding guest in "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," frantic to spill forth a cautionary tale that's rendered him sleepless.

In the first production under its new name, the Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre (SFGT) certainly is continuing the Alias Stage tradition of energetic excellence. Standout acting and sure-handed directing by Trinity Rep actor Fred Sullivan Jr. give us a play that tears away from the contrivances on the page and emerges into fierce and poignant life. Scenic design by Trinity's William Lane has the action bracketed by bales of hay, a visual reminder of the animal nature of the characters and Lear's eventual abject condition. Marcia Zammerelli's costumes fitly display the pomp but downplay the regal circumstances.

We all know the basic story, though the play is performed too infrequently for many of us to have seen it staged. The elderly king imprudently decides to go into retirement after dividing his kingdom into three equal parts for his daughters and their husbands. Then he and 100 retainers will, he thinks, live on the filial devotion of his children. Daughters Goneril and Regan kowtow as the king and prudence dictate, flowery in their praise of him and competing to describe their devotion. But Cordelia, the youngest and his favorite, refuses. She loves him, she says, exactly as a daughter should. Furious, he sends her away cursed and dowerless, although the King of France witnesses the banishment and, admiring her honesty, takes her as his wife.

Cleverly, the first problem of the play (aside from the kingly naiveté) is solved by Jeanine Kane's feisty portrayal of the impolitic daughter. A pissed-off Cordelia! It works. A doted child is so annoyed that daddy would doubt her love that she all but snarls in injured pride. Terrific. That take patches up a crucial flaw in the story: why would Cordelia self-destruct? Answer: in a fit of injured pride that turned her momentarily stubborn and stupid, daddy's pet thought she could get away with it.

Intelligent touches of that sort abound in this production, often in small ways. Kate Lohman's Goneril is more interested in piecing together the map of the kingdom that the king tore up than she is in listening to the now irrelevant Cordelia. After the sky-shaking, heath-wandering tempest scene, the king's anguished low point, we hear Kent comforting Lear and leading in some bowed, abject creature -- but the trembling wreck is the Fool. Lear struts in defiant -- although the dialogue would invite an abject reading. It's a marvelous moment, which refreshes our interest and revives our hopes for the king.

The SFGT ensemble contains more talent than can be fully utilized. Clare Blackmur as Regan and Chris Perotti as her husband, for example, and Jim O'Brien as Goneril's husband make solid contributions, as does Chris Byrnes as a shiftless steward.

King Lear is filled with numerous characters whose loyalty is ignored. As the Earl of Kent, who stands up for Cordelia, Nigel Gore handles this as matter-of-fact, soldierly duty. Lies turn Edgar, the dutiful son to Gloucester, from a callow naïf to a tormented and hunted man; Brian Lang delivers the range well, especially feigning madness as the filthy moor denizen Poor Tom. Man is nothing more than an animal, Shakespeare constantly reminds us in this play, and Poor Tom is the most graphic reminder, smeared with mud, straw in his hair.

In the parallel family story of the Earl of Gloucester, who is duped by his bastard son Edmund, Normand Beauregard is fascinating. He gives us such a hearty, likeable Gloucester that we are all the more affected when he later loses all. By the time he is blinded and led around by good son Edgar, we are responding to a distinct human being as well as to the Human Condition that Shakespeare is instructing us about. As for Edmund, assistant director Estrella makes him a canny villain rather than an emotional one, the best and brightest of the Gloucester offspring. He addresses the audience like a Satanist giving a seminar in evil-doing, and there is humor to leaven the burdensome lesson.

Mauro Hantman is not only very funny as the Fool but also instructive in a visceral way. This is the most focused of the Bard's many such characters, reminding his liege in countless ways that Lear has been the true fool and knave. Hantman is spritelike and antic, of course, and he gives the clown a tic and the hint of a stammer, delicious traits for someone so eager to impart his witticisms and wisdom. The bowler hat, like Pozo's in Waiting for Godot, is a good touch.

As the linchpin for all of this, Sam Babbitt's Lear holds the impossibly overambitious tragedy together (helped by the 41/2 hours trimmed to 21/2). Since Lear has been drawn by the playwright as Everyman more than as a man, an actor has to flesh him out between the words. Babbitt helps us care for this man and not just the ideas on his banner. This Lear can be not only wry but also funny, high-stepping away from pursuers, childishly eager for more black words from Poor Tom, "my philosopher." Most importantly, we can forgive this Lear; we are allowed glimpses of humility and self-doubt beneath the armor of kingly arrogance. With this quality established well before the play's end, we get several illuminating insights into his (sometimes temporary) redemption -- our reward is not saved for the eventual reconciliation scene with Cordelia. Not that we're lacking for rewards in this deeply satisfying production.

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Hitting the high note

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