Doomed monarch: Ian McKellen as King Lear. Photograph: Tristram Kenton
There has been a strange critical vacuum surrounding Trevor Nunn's much-anticipated staging of King Lear at Stratford.
When Frances Barber, who plays Goneril, injured her knee before press night, Nunn barred reviewers until May 31, a full nine weeks into a 12-week run, pushing the gentleman's agreement that critics don't cover preview performances to its very limit. Reviewers, presumably too bored by the thought of a Nunn hissy fit to fight back, have stuck by this.
Meanwhile, the sold-out production, starring Ian McKellen as Lear, continues its run with punters paying full price for tickets. Germaine Greer, writing in the Guardian, thought: "The production is as perverse as anything Trevor Nunn has ever done. We are back in Ruritania ... with operetta uniforms and occasional bursts of operetta music. There is lots of noise, very loud noise - shots, thunderclaps, total war and brain-churning organ chords - anything to stop you hearing the words." Greer damns McKellen's performance as "virtuosic caricature".
Theatre websites have been kinder. On the Whatsonstage discussion forum, "Lynette" praises Nunn's "clear, well-paced, beautifully directed" staging. The play left one theatre-goer (calling themselves "coated peanuts"), who sat in the front row and was rained on during the storm scene, in raptures, "somewhere between speechless and babbling about how great it was". However, "Jenny" was "seriously underwhelmed, possibly because I had such high expectations".
Like Greer, "Saestina" on Livejournal takes issue with the production's volume control: "It was consistently played at this very manic, one-note pitch that just began to grate ... Garai was a very angry Cordelia, which I've certainly never seen before, but actually kind of worked despite her propensity to shriek her lines and sob unconvincingly. (She wasn't alone in this, almost everyone seemed to be screaming almost the whole time. Frances Barber lost her voice at least three times from all the yelling.)"
Also on Livejournal, "Demona" extols the set - "a gothic-looking hall with heavy red velvet drapes into which the cast filed to organ music" - but "found the production strangely unaffecting".
Elsewhere, there are plaudits for McKellen's performance: "bexless" raves about Nunn's "truly magnificent production", as well as McKellen ("Gandalf is HUNG"). And "philipchevron" reckons the actor "doesn't so much deliver an acting performance or even (yawn) climb the actor's Everest, so much as conduct an expedition to his soul."
Has anyone else seen the production yet? If so, do tell us what you thought.
