![]() As the Fool - usually a touchstone for Lear’s coming pathos - Michael Milligan seems subsumed in props and yet more awkward costuming. ![]() His despair at being blinded is never over-the-top and he expresses well the urge to end his life and avoid the further savagery of Lear’s unraveling court.Īnother strength is Shirine Babb’s Kent, bringing a sparkling charisma and much facility with the language. Wallace gives this performance the kind of old-school conviction that quiets the space and invites the best kind of contemplation of Shakespeare’s words. What does work here is a steadfast performance by Craig Wallace as the ill-fated Gloucester, a victim of the machinations of his illegitimate son, Edmund, and set upon by Regan and her husband Cornwall in their grab for power. SUBSCRIBE TO METRO WEEKLY MAGAZINE FOR FREE Kelly Clarkson Makes An Emotional Return To Music With Two Singles ![]() As for the startling view up Lear’s hospital johnny, one can only report that Page is “every inch a king!” as well as a method actor. Matters aren’t helped by costuming verging on caricature, with leather pants tight enough - or green enough - to distract, furs verging on the comical, and Cordelia in a smock that too obviously telegraphs her virtue as well as her fate. This leads to another overarching quibble - it never works to rely on music as a substitute for authentically-drawn emotion. And as technically stellar as Page’s later climactic howl at Cordelia’s subsequent death - and as much as he emotes through Lear’s crushingly beautiful lament - it feels trapped in a vacuum. If Page captures the right pitch and tenor, without the suggestion of genuine love between these people, the pathos evaporates almost instantly. This is a challenge Godwin should have met, and it haunts the production.Ĭase in point is one of the play’s most touching scenes, when Lear rallies his failing faculties to soothe Cordelia’s fear of their impending imprisonment. And although she is as wholly earnest as is called for, Lily Santiago’s Cordelia gives no sense of her tender bond with Lear. ![]() It’s harder to draw a reading from the other daughters, with Stephanie Jean Lane looking the part of the spoiled Regan but failing to appear as anything more than incidental. One can just about believe that her brittle affect and soon-to-be-revealed ruthlessness has been born of surviving Page’s charming but mercurial narcissist. Of the three daughters, Rosa Gilmore delivers the strongest impression as a Goneril, possessing an angry-realtor edge which in some ways fits with Page’s uber-groomed, alpha Lear. ![]()
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