King Lear, Royal Shakespeare Company's version on PBS

Just a few quick thoughts on the Ian McKellen version of King Lear which I just watched on PBS. First thought: This? This is the Royal Shakespeare Company? I was wondering how Patrick Stewart (he wasn't in it -- I'm making a point, bear with me) was embraced as a great thespian when he returned to Old Blighty after his terrible, multimillion dollar exile in Hollywood. Stewart has always been an awful ham and, while competent in supporting roles if he kept it ratcheted down, was never a "great actor," and certainly no Shakespearean lead. When he tried to A-C-T! it was painful. But after watching this production of Lear I see that the old English standards ain't what they used to be. McKellen just flat-out wasn't that great. Not terrible, but blah. (Ian Holm gave a far better performance in the production PBS ran a couple of years back.) None of the actors were that great -- most were okay, but no one stood out -- which could very well be a problem with the director.

Okay, that's the actors. Now the production. Why on earth was everyone running around dressed as Cossacks and carrying guns in Elizabethan England? I HATE when they do that with Shakespeare: Yes, it's still MacBeth, but, see, it takes place entirely in a Disneyland-type theme park with Jiminy Cricket as Banquo's ghost and Mickey, Goofy and Donald Duck as the Weird Sisters. Utter crap. And the nonsensicalness of it didn't even make sense within its own lunatic world because they still had the Earl of Gloucester and the Duke of Kent, and they called them Gloucester and Kent and what were Gloucester and Kent doing running around as Russians? Or were they even Russians? Were those just extra costumes they had lying around, like when Kirk, Spock and McCoy would beam down to the planet of cowboys and Indians or Nazis or 1930s gangsters or whatever they could find in the Paramount wardrobe department? If the Royal Shakespeare Company had checked a different corner of the wardrobe closet would Cordelia have been dressed as a hippie and Edgar as a giant rabbit? I. Don't. Know.

And actually writing in a scene where the Fool gets hanged before our eyes was incredibly irritating.

So thumbs down on this version of Lear. If you get a chance to see the Ian Holm version, watch it. They took some weird liberties with set designs in that one too, but the acting was off the charts better than here. Or if you're a fan of the more traditional approach, there's still the Olivier version from the 1980s (even though you could see the wires when Lear carries in Cordelia in). But give this version a pass.

The Film Cricket