Daniel Hannan, The Telegraph
May 16, 2014
When I was thirteen, I watched the 1983 Granada TV production of King Lear, with Lawrence Olivier in the title role. It’s sometimes said that by the time you’re old enough to play Lear you’re too old to play him, and Olivier proved the adage both ways. He had acted the part on stage in 1946, when he was still in his thirties. Now, in the last major performance of his life, palpably frail, he could no longer bring the necessary sense of movement, of degeneration, to the role. We saw the foolish fond old man alright (“in the end, we are all King Lear”, observed Goethe in what may be the single most depressing line in the whole of European literature); but we caught no glimpse in the earlier scenes of the domineering king who, unlike most of the audience, has no idea of what is in store for him.
What I most recall about that performance was the reaction of my English teacher, who was showing it to us as a class video. Sitting at the back of the room, and thinking himself unobserved, he began to weep. As Act 5 unfolded, he pulled out his handkerchief and mopped away freely. Few thirteen-year-old boys are moved to tears by videos, but I remember thinking then that there was something special about a play that could so affect a man who, being an English teacher, must have read it before dozens of times.
Now I, too, find myself pulled back again and again to that almost unbearable tragedy. A first-rate performance can leave me feeling drained for days afterwards. Simon Russell Beale is currently playing the king at the National Theatre and, as in all his roles, has given a great deal of thought to how his character develops during the action. For the play to work, the audience must get a sense of Lear’s decline from dictator to dotard. We have to believe that he senses it, too, otherwise his rages lack pathos. The best Lears are those who, like Meryl Streep in her brilliant portrayal of Margaret Thatcher, convey their inner awareness of, and frustration with, what is happening to them: “And, to deal plainly, I fear I am not in my perfect mind”. […continued]
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