THEATER

Polonsky Theater
King Lear - Shakespeare



Well, here's to a beautiful Saturday afternoon filled with murder, intrigue, and sadness.  We're going to see King Lear!

Below is the New York Times' review.  Our seats were the best in the house and Carolyn sat next to the critic.  He liked the show.

THEATER|THEATER REVIEW

Shakespeare Reimagined, Once Quietly, and Once Very Loud

‘King Lear,’ With Michael Pennington, Opens in Brooklyn

By BEN BRANTLEYMARCH 27, 2014

        

 “King Lear” has lowered its voice, the better to be heard more clearly. The bluster quotient has been toned down in Arin Arbus’s thoughtful and affecting interpretation of this most daunting of tragedies, which opened on Thursday night at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.

Oh, don’t worry. Thunder still rumbles, swords still clack noisily, and men still shout in defiance at the unbearable cruelties of the gods. Blood flows copiously enough to unsettle the squeamish, and that long-awaited fifth-act chorus of “howls” is appropriately loud and harrowing.

Yet more than any “Lear” I’ve seen (and nobody knows all the “Lears” I’ve seen), this Theater for a New Audience production gives the impression of talking to — rather than yelling at — its audience. “Come closer,” it seems to say. “Listen carefully. You might just find yourself in what’s being said.” No matter that you and your own kin will never be royals.

For Ms. Arbus is here to remind us just how much “Lear” is a story not only of dynasty but also of families, with all their mixed-up rivalries and affections. Starting with the British actor Michael Pennington’s delicate portrait of a paterfamilias who has never taken the time to know his daughters but now expects the world of them, this “Lear” is less electrifying epic tragedy than absorbing domestic drama.

Some theatergoers may regret the absence of an unconditionally volcanic Lear, who struts and rants his hours upon the stage in ways that force us into awe-struck submission. But after decades of watching high-voltage versions — and this year’s contenders have already included Frank Langella (a power-addicted Lear at the Brooklyn Academy of Music) and Simon Russell Beale (a Stalinesque Lear at the National Theater In London) — I welcomed the chance to get to know the old guy under more relaxed circumstances.

By relaxed, I don’t mean casual or accidental. Ms. Arbus has obviously been conscientious in her reading of this play, and in turning her insights into action. But instead of imposing big conceptual metaphors (“Lear” in Bosnia! “Lear” in a Soviet dictatorship!), she works from the inside out.

The key here lies in the relationships between parents and progeny, and among siblings. Ms. Arbus starts with the everyday to build toward the monumental.

Let’s take the opening scene, in which the old King, who has decided to retire, asks his three daughters to say how much they love him before he rewards them with their inheritance. When Cordelia (Lilly Englert), his youngest and favorite, refuses to lay on the flattery, he snaps and orders her banishment.

As Mr. Pennington plays the moment, you can tell that Lear regrets what he’s said as soon as the words leave his mouth. There’s a softening plea in his glowering eyes that seems to say: “I didn’t mean it. Get me out of this.”

I don’t know about you, but I’ve certainly experienced family quarrels in which an ostensibly small slight assumed a long and smothering life of its own. The imp of the perverse (to borrow from Poe) is never more self-sabotagingly present than in arguments with loved ones, when feelings run so deep that we can’t even fathom them.

The sorry events that follow here seem personally upsetting because you’re so aware that none of this would have happened if Lear had thought before he spoke. Mr. Pennington makes it clear that Lear’s subconscious never stops slapping him in rebuke from that moment on.

His anger also lights a match to the combustible powder of which his family has always been made. This production is unusually strong in suggesting the dysfunctional dynamics that operate among Lear’s daughters. The elder two, Goneril and Regan (Rachel Pickup and Bianca Amato, both superb), seem steeped in a history of sibling squabbles and power games. For once, I believed that they, along with Ms. Englert’s youthfully severe Cordelia, were truly blood-bound.

The same ties of consanguinity are evident in the parallel family of the Earl of Gloucester (a touchingly goatlike Christopher McCann) and his sons, the scheming Edmund (Chandler Williams) and the virtuous Edgar (Jacob Fishel). The brothers have an easygoing rapport when we first meet them, and Edmund’s subsequent perfidy feels more than ever like an act of unspeakable violation.

That’s what this “Lear” is about: how blindly and instinctively we rely on our families, and how shocked and solitary we feel when that trust is betrayed. Mr. Pennington’s King is someone who has assumed unthinkingly that a certain social structure will always be in place for him.

After his elder daughters’ rejection, he seems truly stunned out of his wits, and he always appears to be musing, “It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.” Mr. Pennington punctuates the expected blasts of rage with a quieter, introspective insight that is even more devastating. As a man who ran a country for years, he knows the dangers of chaos, and you can sense him trying to find a steady island of calm within his own disordered wits.

In variety of shadings, not all the cast — which also includes a serviceably gruff Timothy D. Stickney as the trusty Earl of Kent — is on Mr. Pennington’s level. And making Lear’s Fool (a callow Jake Horowitz, the son of the company’s artistic director, Jeffrey Horowitz) a saucy boy pariah strips an essential depth from his relationship with the King.

But if some of the performances are one-note, they all combine into a clear, often haunting melody. Its motifs are beautifully echoed by the design team, which includes Riccardo Hernandez (the uncompromisingly spartan set) and Susan Hilferty (the stately Edwardian costumes).

Most crucially, Marcus Doshi’s lighting and Michaël Attias’s sound and music design summon a world in which the senses career between confusion and clarity. A sequence in which the blinded Gloucester stands alone amid the cacophony of battle is exquisite.

And for the fabled storm on the heath, we shift between muddled darkness and sudden, startling brightness. In those precious moments of illumination, we are allowed what feel like flashes of complete understanding, the kind that come to us in dreams and vanish by morning. Mostly, we’re left groping in the shadows, trying to make sense of the people we thought we knew best.

Below is a Wall Street Journal review of the production.

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

He's a Guide to Fellow

Shakespeareans

His 'spare information' goes into books aimed at

other actors.

By

JOANNE KAUFMAN

March 19, 2014 5:09 p.m. ET

Brooklyn, N.Y.

With his red sneakers, loose-fitting blue trousers and scruffy beard, Michael Pennington looked rather like a vagrant as he walked through a gentrifying neighborhood here.

But perhaps that was just his way of getting into character; Mr. Pennington, 70, is playing a homeless man, an elderly imperious fellow down on his luck and down on his daughters, in the Theatre for a New Audience's production of "King Lear," directed by Arin Arbus. Currently in previews, it opens March 27.

Ken Fallin

Mr. Pennington isn't exactly a household name in the U.S., except perhaps to those "Star Wars" obsessives who send fan mail hailing his performance as imperial officer Moff Jerjerrod, commanding officer of the Death Star, in "Return of the Jedi." But in his native England he's an acclaimed classical actor whose many stage credits include leading roles with the Royal Shakespeare Company—among them, Angelo and the Duke in "Measure for Measure"; the title roles in "Hamlet" and "Timon of Athens"; star turns in "The Madness of George III," "The Master Builder" and "The Dance of Death." He also frequently tours in his one-man show "Sweet Will," a tribute to Stratford-upon-Avon's favorite native son.

"Michael is brilliant—emotionally, technically and intellectually," Patrick Stewart said. Ian McKellen, meanwhile, described Mr. Pennington as "one of theater's matchless treasures. His acting style is modest and detailed, supported by intelligence and unrivaled experience.

"Brooklyn audiences are lucky to be the first to see his long-awaited King Lear," Mr. McKellen added. "I'll be among them."

Mr. Pennington is also an impresario (from 1986 to 1994 he was co-head of the English Shakespeare Company), a scholar of the Bard, and the author of books like "Twelfth Night: A User's Guide" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream: A User's Guide." The pages of his "Hamlet: A User's Guide" were apparently well-thumbed by Simon Russell Beale and Jude Law during their respective stints as the prince of Denmark. "They told me how helpful it was, though maybe they were just being nice to me," said Mr. Pennington over a cappuccino last week. "I made them swear on their swords that they actually read it."

The road to his current undertaking was lined with ambivalence. "If you do a lot of Shakespeare, 'Lear' is something you're supposed to want to do," Mr. Pennington said in his flexible, silvery voice. "So you have to work out in your mind whether you really want to do it and if you have anything particular to bring to it other than what other people have brought to it, or if it's just something that lies in your path."

He felt no particular yearning until half-a-dozen years ago, when he played composer Richard Strauss in Ronald Harwood's play "Collaboration." "Strauss isn't a particularly Lear-like character, but he is an old man who regrets much of what he's done," Mr. Pennington said. "I was having breakfast one morning, and I threw my towel down and said 'I want to do "Lear" now, right now.' It was a startling thing, so sort of thespy, but I thought 'I could do it now.'"

The wheels were set in motion when, in 2010, Mr. Pennington came to New York with the two-hander "Love Is My Sin," an adaptation of select Shakespeare sonnets assembled and directed by Peter Brook and produced here by Theatre for a New Audience. At the opening-night party, Mr. Pennington met Ms. Arbus, TFANA's associate artistic director, and was immediately intrigued. "I'm not particularly interested in talking about Shakespeare to too many people," he said. "But we went to brunch and had a really interesting time."

Eighteen months ago, the two arranged a weeklong "Lear" exploration. "We sat around the table and went at the play without prejudice so that at the end of the time we could say 'this isn't going to work,'" Mr. Pennington said. "Well, I had the time of my life, and I said 'I really want to do this.'"

The only child of a lawyer and a housewife, Mr. Pennington was 11 when, unwillingly, he saw his first Shakespeare play. "My parents said, 'You have to come and see this.' Not because they were particularly keen on it—they just thought it was part of my education. They picked 'Macbeth,' which, as it happened, was a very good choice.

"The effect it had on me was completely visceral," he continued. "A lot of it had to do with the Tarantino-like theatricality of that production: a lot of blood, a lot of ghost effects. But there was also something about the language.

"Afterward, I went home, pulled a volume of Shakespeare off the shelf and started reading it out loud."

Thus, his course was set. "I knew what I wanted to do and never thought about anything else," said Mr. Pennington, who acknowledges that he's been less than canny about the management of his career. It was down to Jeremy Irons and him for the leading male role in "The French Lieutenant's Woman," Mr. Pennington claimed, and "I backed out of the race because I was offered 'Hamlet' at the RSC.

"I didn't stop doing Shakespeare and go do something else like Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen," he added. "The proper thing is to leave and come back with a certain reputation and more power. Somehow I missed a beat in all that."

Mr. Pennington began writing his Shakespeare guides as a way of recycling what he terms his spare information. "I've done these plays so often, and yet there are things I haven't been able to use. I know stuff about how the plays seem to work best.

"I know that 'Coriolanus' is difficult because the battle scene is at the beginning, rather than at the end where it usually is—thus you're exhausted after half an hour. So how are you going to get yourself up when you have the whole of the play ahead of you? I know that 'Hamlet' has various problems of logic from one scene to another that you had better be aware of. I don't have solutions, just guarded recommendations."

Alas, there is yet no "King Lear: A User's Guide," but Mr. Pennington seems well-versed in the challenges of the role. "You have such a little window with Lear," he said. "You've got to be convincingly enough that age"—Shakespeare gives the character's age as "four score and upward"—but you also have to have the energy and the memory for the part. And that's always been the problem. There are actors, brilliant actors, who have played him a bit too late when they just didn't have the physical stamina."

Mr. Pennington doesn't have to have any such concerns. "I feel about 50," he said. "I get tired washing the dishes or walking to the corner shop, but I never get tired acting."

Ms. Kaufman writes about culture and the arts for the Journal.