King Lear, Actor's Shakespeare Project
Oct. 22nd, 2005 12:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xiphiasSo, the Actor's Shakespeare Project production of King Lear, which is their first show of their second season, has been extended twice, and is currently sold out until the end of the run. Even so, they occasionally have standby tickets, and Lis managed to get two for tonight.
I've never seen nor read the play before -- I was more or less familiar with the general outlines of the plot (three daughters, two of whom are scum, nice one gets screwed over, it's a Shakespearian tragedy, so everybody dies (except for in the Nachum Tate version, which was actually the more popular version for most of its history, in which Tate managed to put a happy ending on it, but that's neither here nor there.))
So, my impressions will partially be comments on the play, and partially on the production.
First, the space. One of the things that ASP has made a trademark is its use of unconventional spaces, and conventional spaces in unconventional ways. I mean, when they did Measure for Measure, the space they had included a fairly typical proscenium arch stage. Which they used for additional audience seating. 'Cause proscenium arch stages are far too confining for the way that these actors move.
What was this space? As Lis and I took our seats, we tried to imagine what the space actually was before ASP got ahold of it. Our best guess was that it was a hallway or foyer of some sort. There was a staircase, walls, pillars. The space wasn't quite rectangular -- or, if it was, they disguised the fact quite well. They painted murals on the walls, hung creative and somewhat disturbing lighting, put rows of stadium seating along the sides, and covered the floor in, well, I think it was shredded rubber -- the stuff that looks like mulch, but it's made of shredded rubber. Painted the pillars gold, couple of red padded chairs as thrones, a big rug in the middle of the area.
The lighting was on the dim side, and with a subtle orange sodium-bulb-type wrongness to it.
So, even when we were just sitting in the room waiting for the play to start, we were in an environment with no 90% angles anywhere to be seen, and with the kind of lighting that you associate with eerie parking lots, deserted highways, and the like. So we were already on edge, just from the ROOM. THAT'S brilliant set and lighting design.
The play starts, and this odd, quiet, repetitive, mechanical low moaning noise starts. I think a lot of people didn't even quite notice it, exactly, but I know my blood pressure went up, and I felt my heart rate rise.
Even before any actors appeared on stage, I felt the kind of sinking feeling in my gut that I feel when I'm on the upslope of a roller coaster, about to hit the dropoff. I hate roller coasters, by the way.
Allyn Burrows and Colin Lane show up on stage, Allyn Burrows showing a calm, steady demeanor, and Colin Lane showing a more animated, active waiting.
And, basically, nothing happens for five minutes -- and it's FANTASTIC. I mean, for five minutes or so, the rest of the cast who are in the opening scene walk out, in pairs or singly, slowly, with many pauses and more time than you'd think a modern audience would be willing to grant -- and it all works. As all this is going on, you're watching the body language, the facial expressions, and the interactions, and there's this weird, almost subliminal noise going on, and the lighting is off, and there are no right angles, and it all feels just very slightly nightmarish.
And then the play starts.
I don't really want to give too much away. There's a character who is either pretending to be mad, or has actually gone mad, and you get a real sense that he's honestly not sure which one it is. There's a scene where this madman (or sane man pretending to be mad to save himself) is talking with the king, who is going mad, and the king's fool, who probably is mad, is doing his best to maintain sanity.
There are dirty deeds, done dirt cheap, and dialogue that was wonderful in English, but for which I hope to someday hear the original Yiddish. (King Lear was a huge hit on the Yiddish stage, and, having finally seen it, I understand why -- "How sharper than a serpent's tooth to have a thankless child" is SUCH a Yiddisher thought -- along with King Lear's curse of Goneril, which, well, if King Lear isn't ACTUALLY a Jewish mother, then he went to the same school.)
What else can I say? During the scenes of violence (blindings, vicious sword and knife fights), I heard genuine gasps and whimpers from the audience. Including me. The violence felt . . . violent. Harsh. Scary. Actor's Shakespeare Project has fantastic fight choreographers, and their violence, no matter how stylized, never feels fake. It may be obviously staged, but it never feels stagy. It always has emotional reality. Which, of course, means that watching their fight scenes feels like going through an emotional meat grinder.
Also, I note that they've obviously been having some cross-pollination with the Higgins Armory Sword Guild. People in their sword fights are doing things like, y'know, bashing with the pommel, using wrestling moves with the blade as a lever, grabbing the blade at the riccosa to do stronger blocks, and so forth. Which is one of the reasons why the violence feels so visceral.
I'm not even going to single out particular performances: they were all great. The only thing I'm going to say about that is that Allyn Burrows (who played Kent in this one, Glouscester in Richard III, the Duke in Measure for Measure) really does Upright Noble And Pure characters really well, and Ben Evett (who played Cassius in Julius Caesar, and Edmund in this production of Lear) does scheming bastards really well. And I'd love to see Burrows get a chance to play a scumbucket, and Evett get a chance to play a paladin-type, just 'cause I think the actors would have fun with 'em.
So, now I've seen King Lear. And I don't think that I could have seen a better production. I loved this cast, I loved the space and how they used it, I loved the lighting design, the sound design, and everything.
I've never seen nor read the play before -- I was more or less familiar with the general outlines of the plot (three daughters, two of whom are scum, nice one gets screwed over, it's a Shakespearian tragedy, so everybody dies (except for in the Nachum Tate version, which was actually the more popular version for most of its history, in which Tate managed to put a happy ending on it, but that's neither here nor there.))
So, my impressions will partially be comments on the play, and partially on the production.
First, the space. One of the things that ASP has made a trademark is its use of unconventional spaces, and conventional spaces in unconventional ways. I mean, when they did Measure for Measure, the space they had included a fairly typical proscenium arch stage. Which they used for additional audience seating. 'Cause proscenium arch stages are far too confining for the way that these actors move.
What was this space? As Lis and I took our seats, we tried to imagine what the space actually was before ASP got ahold of it. Our best guess was that it was a hallway or foyer of some sort. There was a staircase, walls, pillars. The space wasn't quite rectangular -- or, if it was, they disguised the fact quite well. They painted murals on the walls, hung creative and somewhat disturbing lighting, put rows of stadium seating along the sides, and covered the floor in, well, I think it was shredded rubber -- the stuff that looks like mulch, but it's made of shredded rubber. Painted the pillars gold, couple of red padded chairs as thrones, a big rug in the middle of the area.
The lighting was on the dim side, and with a subtle orange sodium-bulb-type wrongness to it.
So, even when we were just sitting in the room waiting for the play to start, we were in an environment with no 90% angles anywhere to be seen, and with the kind of lighting that you associate with eerie parking lots, deserted highways, and the like. So we were already on edge, just from the ROOM. THAT'S brilliant set and lighting design.
The play starts, and this odd, quiet, repetitive, mechanical low moaning noise starts. I think a lot of people didn't even quite notice it, exactly, but I know my blood pressure went up, and I felt my heart rate rise.
Even before any actors appeared on stage, I felt the kind of sinking feeling in my gut that I feel when I'm on the upslope of a roller coaster, about to hit the dropoff. I hate roller coasters, by the way.
Allyn Burrows and Colin Lane show up on stage, Allyn Burrows showing a calm, steady demeanor, and Colin Lane showing a more animated, active waiting.
And, basically, nothing happens for five minutes -- and it's FANTASTIC. I mean, for five minutes or so, the rest of the cast who are in the opening scene walk out, in pairs or singly, slowly, with many pauses and more time than you'd think a modern audience would be willing to grant -- and it all works. As all this is going on, you're watching the body language, the facial expressions, and the interactions, and there's this weird, almost subliminal noise going on, and the lighting is off, and there are no right angles, and it all feels just very slightly nightmarish.
And then the play starts.
I don't really want to give too much away. There's a character who is either pretending to be mad, or has actually gone mad, and you get a real sense that he's honestly not sure which one it is. There's a scene where this madman (or sane man pretending to be mad to save himself) is talking with the king, who is going mad, and the king's fool, who probably is mad, is doing his best to maintain sanity.
There are dirty deeds, done dirt cheap, and dialogue that was wonderful in English, but for which I hope to someday hear the original Yiddish. (King Lear was a huge hit on the Yiddish stage, and, having finally seen it, I understand why -- "How sharper than a serpent's tooth to have a thankless child" is SUCH a Yiddisher thought -- along with King Lear's curse of Goneril, which, well, if King Lear isn't ACTUALLY a Jewish mother, then he went to the same school.)
What else can I say? During the scenes of violence (blindings, vicious sword and knife fights), I heard genuine gasps and whimpers from the audience. Including me. The violence felt . . . violent. Harsh. Scary. Actor's Shakespeare Project has fantastic fight choreographers, and their violence, no matter how stylized, never feels fake. It may be obviously staged, but it never feels stagy. It always has emotional reality. Which, of course, means that watching their fight scenes feels like going through an emotional meat grinder.
Also, I note that they've obviously been having some cross-pollination with the Higgins Armory Sword Guild. People in their sword fights are doing things like, y'know, bashing with the pommel, using wrestling moves with the blade as a lever, grabbing the blade at the riccosa to do stronger blocks, and so forth. Which is one of the reasons why the violence feels so visceral.
I'm not even going to single out particular performances: they were all great. The only thing I'm going to say about that is that Allyn Burrows (who played Kent in this one, Glouscester in Richard III, the Duke in Measure for Measure) really does Upright Noble And Pure characters really well, and Ben Evett (who played Cassius in Julius Caesar, and Edmund in this production of Lear) does scheming bastards really well. And I'd love to see Burrows get a chance to play a scumbucket, and Evett get a chance to play a paladin-type, just 'cause I think the actors would have fun with 'em.
So, now I've seen King Lear. And I don't think that I could have seen a better production. I loved this cast, I loved the space and how they used it, I loved the lighting design, the sound design, and everything.
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-22 11:19 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-22 12:24 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-22 12:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-23 12:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-23 04:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-24 01:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-22 01:53 pm (UTC)King Lear happens to be my dad's favorite Shakespeare play IIRC. I don't think I've ever actually seen it performed.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-22 03:20 pm (UTC)BU "Studio" theatre space.
Date: 2005-10-24 08:04 pm (UTC)Re: BU "Studio" theatre space.
Date: 2005-10-24 08:05 pm (UTC)