Yes, Christopher Lloyd as King Lear was a bad idea
A dead weight at the center of Shakespeare & Company’s production of “King Lear” drags down the entire show. Its name is Christopher Lloyd.
The announcement of the 82-year-old Lloyd’s casting to star as the aged, raging monarch for a two-month run certainly raised interest, and eyebrows. The actor, after all, is best known for playing kooks, including Jim Ignatowski on the sitcom “Taxi” and Doc Brown in the “Back to the Future” films. The character of Lear may be interpreted in many ways, but lovable weirdo isn’t among them.
Just maybe, the thinking went, the powers that be at Shakespeare & Company and the production’s director, Nicole Ricciardi, who has a nine-year record of directing excellence in Lenox, knew something the public didn’t. Lloyd performed extensively on New York City stages in the 1960s and ’70s, and reviews from a 2010 production of “Death of a Salesman” that had a short New England tour report he acquitted himself well as Willy Loman, another monumental role as a failing older man.
But right from his entrance on Shakespeare & Company’s handsome new outdoor Spruce Stage, it’s clear that Lloyd isn’t up to Lear. He may have full understanding of the character, but he doesn’t convey it to the audience, and so the principle reaction is puzzlement. It’s rarely clear why Lear does what he does, whether it’s his initial dismissal of his youngest daughter, Cordelia (Jasmine Cheri Rush), or the famous mad scene. In a mind-bending anachronism, Lear appears to have used Doc Brown’s Delorean to zoom to 1980, watched a few episodes of “Taxi,” then zoomed back to his own era to channel Jim Ignatowski on the storm-ravaged heath. His foggy voice and diction better suited for screen work further diminish Lloyd’s intelligibility and deny the pleasure of hearing some of the play’s most memorable lines delivered well.
All of this makes “King Lear,” always a long haul even in fine productions, a slog most of the time at Shakespeare & Company. Friday’s opening was lengthier still: A rainstorm that started an hour after the performance began required relocating the
audience into the nearby Tina Packer Playhouse. The move stretched a projected running time of two hours and 45 minutes into a full evening of three and a half hours.
Perhaps Lloyd will improve over the remaining 35 performances. (And perhaps he won’t need a prompter to call out lines, as happened twice on opening night.) Were the central character even a bit stronger, it seems likely the full production would be significantly more successful, because Ricciardi has surrounded Lloyd with a supporting cast of impeccable professionals, including the company’s artistic director, Allyn Burroughs, spot-on as Lear’s Fool; Maconnia Chesser, always powerful, as scheming daughter Goneril; the peerless Jonathan Epstein as Kent; Nigel Gore as Gloucester; and Jennie M. Jadow, who like Chesser excels at Shakespearean comedy but here, as Regan, becomes an imposing daughter in the play’s battle for family and country.
While chatting with a friend before Friday’s opening, I mentioned the Shakespeare scholar Jonathan Bate’s familiar comment about the role of Lear, that by the time you are old enough to play it, you’re too old to play it. Not necessarily. Laurence Olivier was 76 when he gave a legendary performance for a 1983 television production of “King Lear,” and Glenda Jackson was 83 when her turn as Lear, on Broadway in 2019, was described as a powerful and deeply perceptive.
Lloyd has had a long and successful career. His enduring audience appeal and acclaim are deserved. But his Lear won’t further burnish either.