King Lear, Bedford does Lear justice.

'King Lear' digs into reality gap
Astute production opens Stratford

May 30, 2007

BY MARTIN F. KOHN

FREE PRESS THEATER CRITIC

STRATFORD, Ont. -- Speaking in Michigan last month, Aaron Lansky, founder of the National Yiddish Book Center, remarked that all of Shakespeare's plays were translated into Yiddish and that the most popular was "King Lear."

Why? Because it's about trouble with the children.

True enough, but that's not the only way of looking at it. Brian Bedford's production, which opened the 2007 Stratford Festival Monday night, is about the gap between expectation and actuality and the tragic consequences that ensue.

Bedford, who also plays Lear, begins with a scene of festivity; there is music offstage, laughter on. The occasion is Lear's handing over his kingdom to his three daughters and Bedford lets us know, before Shakespeare does, which one Lear loves best.

Goneril and Regan enter from the wings. Lear enters from the back of house, hand-in-hand with Cordelia, and they walk down the aisle to the stage.

Lear will apportion his realm according to how much each daughter loves him. Goneril and Regan make their patently phony, overstuffed declarations. Cordelia speaks honestly: her love is a daughter's for a father.

Lear disowns her on the spot. So begins his downfall. He leaves Cordelia nothing; he leaves himself less. He is now dependent on Goneril and Regan, and they're about to show their true colors.

An astute reader of Shakespeare, Bedford listens as he reads (all actors do) and he has heard Lear's words about Cordelia, how "her voice was ever soft."

Bedford's aural sense informs his directing. Sarah Topham's Cordelia is soft-spoken. Wenna Shaw (Goneril) and Wendy Robie (Regan) speak in voices of stainless steel.

Bedford takes his own sonorous voice and shrivels it to befit Lear's 80-plus years.

Dion Johnstone, as Edmund, the Earl of Gloucester's evil son (more trouble with children), acts the dashing hero Edmund believes himself to be.

Peter Donaldson plays Lear's loyal friend the Duke of Kent, as the kind of unassuming hero who wouldn't be out of place in a classic Western movie. Bernard Hopkins, as Lear's Fool, acts even when most eyes are on Lear, registering deepest pain as Lear's daughters manifest their disrespect.

Bedford makes some puzzling directorial choices. The most disconcerting involves Gloucester (Scott Wentworth) and his good son, Edgar (Gareth Potter).

When Edgar tricks the blinded, suicidal Gloucester into jumping off a very slight precipice (which Gloucester believes are the cliffs of Dover) the jump occurs on level ground instead of one of the many stairs with which the Festival stage abounds. The audience responded with confused murmurs.

Bedford's Lear may not be the great 2002 Stratford (later Broadway) production that starred Christopher Plummer but it offers much to ponder and it is one of the fastest three hours in Stratford's history.