Anyone who has done time watching a theatrical knight bellow his way through King Lear may relish this 60-minute dance distillation. It’s slimmed to four, gender-switched performers – the ageing monarch is played by Valda Setterfield, doyenne of the New York dance scene, with three men as her wayward daughters.
A paper crown on her head, silver rings on her fingers, Setterfield gazes out with her mournful dromedary profile. Courtly hands swim in the air, then seem frantically to beat away the noise of the world – head of a family, of a kingdom, she has less control than she hopes.
John Scott’s production is a telescoped tumble through Lear’s tragedy. Setterfield scatters sweets to placate her competitive offspring and howls at the storm as sheets of paper printed with scraps of Shakespeare swirl around her. In between, she phones an unseen, neglectful child. “We miss you,” she implores. “Do you need money? The dog misses you.”
Some flourishes would gee up a conventional production – especially a Cordelia (French dancer Kevin Coquelard) who is no willowy ingenue but rants “Stupid Lear!” before departing the stage in a snit while singing a Piaf number. But I’m not sure how much this gravely whimsical collage of movement and text illuminates King Lear – more interesting is how Shakespeare’s tragedy rethinks the dependency of ageing. The production closed the Southbank’s (B)old festival, featuring work by older artists; Setterfield, who has performed with everyone from Merce Cunningham to Woody Allen, is 83.
As parent and children boss about and harry each other, make and resist intemperate demands, it reminds us that each socially isolated, memory-blurred senior retains an emotional life as rich and searing as Lear’s own.
