Innovative take on a Shakespeare classic
Lear
(out of four) By William Shakespeare, directed by Graham Abbey. Until Jan. 28 at the Harbourfront Centre Theatre, 231 Queens Quay. W. groundlingtheatre.com, 416-973-4000.
The word missing from the title cues the innovation in Groundling Theatre Company’s production of Shakespeare’s Lear.
The lead role here is played by a female actor, Seana McKenna, and she is playing it as a woman.
And as with Diane D’Aquila’s performance as another Queen Lear this past summer in Shakespeare in High Park, this casting opens up new meanings in the play and allows a great actor to bring their skills, range, and embodied presence to the kind of role that is so rarely afforded to senior women in classic plays.
McKenna’s all-out, heart-wrenching performance is more than enough to recommend Graham Abbey’s production, which bears the emerging hallmarks of the Groundling approach. Spare and striking design and production choices in an intimate environment focus the audience’s attention on a skilled ensemble’s deep engagement with Shakespeare’s text.
Performance levels are somewhat uneven, however, and, while the brick-walled Harbourfront Centre Theatre is beautiful, the in-the-round setting exposes the static nature of some of the play’s longer scenes.
In an insightful program note, Abbey writes about the primal connection between mothers and children: When Queen Lear says “I gave you all” to the daughters who’ve betrayed her, it resonates more literally and profoundly than if it were a man.
But in the play’s opening scene, the cold formality of McKenna’s interactions with her brittle elder daughters Goneril (Deborah Hay) and Regan (Diana Donnelly) suggest the ways in which Lear’s focus on her societal power has eroded that bond.
The act that sparks the play, as written, is Lear’s unexpected choice to rewrite his will on the basis of his daughters’ capacity to verbally express their devotion to him.
Having that order be spoken by McKenna’s brusque, all-business Queen grounds the production in this betrayal of the mother-daughter relationship.
The action of the play is then a tragic downward spiral as Goneril and Regan jockey for power by undermining Lear’s authority as monarch and as parent, which drives the older woman to madness.
Peter Hartwell’s sets and costumes and other production choices place the action in a kind of nowhere-and-everywhere time and place, another of Abbey’s Groundling signatures (the characters wear many a trendy infinity scarf, but there are also sword fights). This lack of specificity takes the edge of the play’s potential critique of the patriarchy — there’s the implication that women are fated to struggle with the choice between maternity and power forever.
It’s not my impression that this message is intended — and whatever the intent, it’s great debate fodder — but I do wonder what committing to a place and time might add to Groundling’s productions in future.
Here, the strength of the performances of McKenna, Hay, and Donnelly make the relationship between them one of the production’s strongest aspects.
Fascinating too are the ways in which Gloucester’s (Jim Mezon) relationship with his sons is highlighted as a counterpoint to Lear’s with her daughters. Alex McCooeye’s performance as the scheming Edmund is highly cerebral.
Mezon plays Gloucester as a bumbling middleman who credibly and movingly finds humility through suffering. Abbey’s staging of his fall on the heath crystallizes the produc- tion’s focus on parent-child trust — it’s a beautiful moment, delicately underscored by George Meanwell’s score played live by Graham Hargrove, and caught in Kimberly Purtell’s superb lighting.
Colin Mochrie, in his Shakespearean debut, does not seem fully in his element: there is not sufficient comic context for his playing of the Fool’s jokes as knowingly bad to land properly.
Kevin Hanchard ( Orphan Black) is superb as Kent: His resonant voice and nuanced delivery of Shakespeare’s language command attention whenever he’s onstage.
As the youngest daughter, Cordelia, Mercedes Morris seems out of her depth, stuck in a single mode of delivery and expression, and this somewhat weakens the impact of her betrayal by, and eventually reconciliation with, McKenna’s Lear.
Nonetheless, there is great emotional power in McKenna’s performance in the play’s final acts, pathetic and feeble in a soiled nightgown, but still capable of clarity and recognition. A moment when her reconciliation with Gloucester lurches into the erotic hints at the ways in which pursuing power may have required repressing her sexuality.
What a year for McKenna: having successfully scaled this mountain of a role, this summer she’ll play Julius Caesar at Stratford. Opening up the canon brings great rewards for actors and audiences alike.