A grizzled Lear for the Brexit era
King Lear Bristol Old Vic
One decision, thought to be taken in the country’s best interests, then “BAM!” it all unravels. Does that sound a little familiar? Tom Morris has primarily timed his Bristol Old Vic revival of Shakespeare’s grand tragedy of unwise kingship to coincide with the graduation of students at the Old Vic drama school, from whose ranks he has plucked some of the cream; a bold experiment that marries grizzled experience (led by Timothy West’s 81-year-old Lear) with fresh-faced youth.
I arrived with a retinue of misgivings, scenting too a cost-cutting exercise. But in broad terms, this combination of two distinct realms of talent not only forms one satisfying unity of excellence but it brings out the generational struggle at the heart of the play; the elders claiming to know better, the young mutinous and savage in their resentment.
The way King Lear’s nightmare vision of a power vacuum, rife with psychological disturbance and civic disintegration, chimes with the Brexit fall-out is an added gift of relevance.
West has played Lear four times in his career – the earliest point being in 1971. Now he’s of an age when divesting himself of regal cares makes clear sense but, brilliantly, Morris suggests he’s still gripped by delusions of prowess.
Revelling courtiers thrash around to pounding beats, antlers on their heads; West’s suited ex-monarch, glass of wine in hand, tries to groove on down with the young ravers. Funny, pathetic – worrying; it all implodes swiftly and this puffed-up patriarch, originally bullish and intemperate, dwindles in a matter of scenes, seeking consolation from Stephanie Cole’s Fool.
The former Open All Hours star is not capering but slow, sage, delivering her quips more in I-told-you-so, tutting sorrow than with satirical contempt; she might almost be his wife – there are shades of a sitcom character too. The pair sit together like an old bickering couple at a bus-shelter; “I did her wrong,” he says of the banished Cordelia, as much to himself, as to her.
There have been greater, more grandstanding Lears, but West hooks you in with his unshowy mutability and the pathos of knowing that this must be the last great role he will attempt. “I will do such things, what they are, yet I know not…” he rails in that funny-awful outburst against his persecutors, refusing to weep and yet weeping. And then, that line, among the most touching in the canon: “Oh fool, I shall go mad!” the act of recognising incipient insanity bringing it on apace.
I could go on but praise must be parcelled out and distributed elsewhere. David Hargreaves’s Gloucester undergoes a parallel journey of discovery, patronisingly patting his bastard son Edmund (nicely impassive Alex York) on the head in the first scene, his eyes gorily plucked out in seemingly next to no time (the evening hurtles by at two hours 40 minutes).
Among the youngsters, I’d pass the entire brigade with distinction, with merit too for the student designers (Anna Orton, imposing set, Aldo Vazquez Yela, costumes). Casting agents should keep an eye on Tom Byrne, agile and intense as Edgar, stripped to a loin-cloth and selfflagellating, more animal than man as the storm breaks (antique stage machinery supplies the rumbling effects).
Jessica Temple’s Goneril, Michelle Fox’s Regan and Poppy Pedder’s Cordelia are each so assured they might have been doing this for years. And the whole ensemble, required to supply added rear-of-stage choreographed movement too, and dealing superbly with the battle scenes, seem galvanised; they’re not at some fusty regional playhouse but at the centre of the universe and that zest, that passion is infectious. You saw them here first.