Theater review: 'King Lear' is demanding but rewarding at Mid-Peninsula Shakespeare Festival Theater review: 'King Lear' is demanding but rewarding at Mid-Peninsula Shakespeare Festival (June 22, 2005)

By Bryan Wiggin

Almanac Theater Critic

"King Lear" is the third of three plays of the Mid-Peninsula Shakespeare Festival, produced by the Festival Theatre Ensemble and presented by the Menlo Players Guild.

"Lear" is the most apocalyptic of Shakespeare's tragedies. While in the others, evil is embodied a few individuals -- Iago, Claudius, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth -- in "Lear," evil permeates the universe and spills from the skies.

In Shakespeare's time, it was believed that disaster ensued from violation of the proper hierarchy of nature: the subservience of child to parent, vassal to lord, even wife to husband. In "Lear," these violations are numerous, and they account for the chaos and suffering that follow.

Old King Lear shakes off the cares of rule by dividing his kingdom among his three daughters. The elder two, Goneril (Leslie Newport) and Regan (Kimberly D. Wood) are fulsome in their declarations of love for him. When the youngest and his favorite, Cordelia, (Christine Sliva), swears no more love than proper to a father, he disowns her. But she is taken to marriage by the King of France (Brennan Holness).

Meanwhile, Edmund (William J. Brown III), the bastard son of the Earl of Gloucester (Mark W. Jordan), conspires to set the father against his legitimate son, Edgar (Gabriel A. Ross).

Lear is to live alternately with his two elder daughters, but they begin to deprive him of his entourage of 100 men, and rather than endure such degradation, he chooses to live in nature.

Going out into a storm, his mind cracks. But, broken, he becomes a man instead of a king, a man who feels the suffering of other creatures.

Both Goneril and Regan lust for Edmund, and the former poisons the latter. When Edmund is mortally wounded by Edgar, Goneril slays herself.

Gloucester has his eyes torn out by the Duke of Cornwall (Jeff Brown), husband of Regan, and is later killed. Cordelia is hanged by agents of Edmund. Lear dies weeping over her body.

Yes, it's a jungle out there, and this production conveys the chaos and terror of disrupted nature. But there is so much horror that, toward the end of the play, in one short scene after another, it begins to feel like too much and is almost wearisome. (I daren't be any more critical of Shakespeare than this.)

The production is directed by Bruce W. De Les Dernier and Amy Himes, and they hold things together admirably well. Sometimes there is a feeling of tumbling forward, almost out of control, but this is not entirely inappropriate to the nature of the play.

Mr. De Les Dernier also takes the title role. For a while, I felt he wasn't giving it enough, but when he goes mad, I realized that he had been holding back so that his demented ragings would have more force. He is especially effective in his final sorrowing over the body of Cordelia.

Overall, performances are solid. Notably good are those of Mr. Ross and Mr. Brown. Ms. Sliva, who also plays the King's Fool, is occasionally not sufficiently audible.

The costumes of Pati Bristow are excellent.

This is a long and demanding play. But it's an experience. And I think it's worth braving the cold night air to have this experience.
INFORMATION

"King Lear," by William Shakespeare, will be performed by the Festival Theatre Ensemble at Mid-Peninsula High School, 1340 Willow Road in Menlo Park, on Saturday, June 25. For information, call 322-3261. Take warm clothing.

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