Shakespeare in Baltimore

Abstract

Oregon Shakespearean Festival, Graham played Lear three times. This Lear, his fourth, was not fully realized. Although at moments, particularly on the heath, Graham's Lear was movingly lost, usually he was a crotchety, cantankerous old nag, hemming and hawing at his daughters and servants with a bark to match the whine of Martha J. Brown's oddly rigid Cordelia. Conventionally presented as more sinned against than sinning, this Lear never managed to make us care. The reason not the need speech was uniformly angry; the soul in bliss speech was uniformly tired; and the blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! speech of III. ii had nothing of a nature's storm in its rhythm as spoken, conveying only crusty determination. Due to this actor's limited scope, his monochromatic Lear, the play was reduced to a family squabble. As the Fool, Albert Sanders was inexcusable. For while Graham's Lear was simply ordinary and plodding, unexplored, Sanders seemed to go out of his way to come up with a bizarre characterization of the Fool. His body folding in on itself, stooped and shuffling, Sanders gazed out at nothing, like a wistful wino on a park bench, not at all like Lear's fool. There was no bond between them. Nothing. As in his production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, director Barry showed considerable imagination and insight, especially in Edgar's band of swarming, muddy beggars and in Gloucester's rebirth at Dover, beautifully and simply staged: the gentle Gloucester just fell forward, and that was enough. But despite Barry's tight direction, fine ensemble work by much of the supporting cast, a very well-staged fight between Edmund and Edgar, a poem of a set, and lovely, evocative traditional music composed by Stewart W. Turner, this production of King Lear left its audience bored, tired, and disgruntled.