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Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy, King Lear, can easily become a one-man show. If the actor playing the crazed king isn’t up to the role, the production will fail; if he’s great, he can carry it. But if other actors merely fill in the story as Lear struggles against the madness he has brought upon himself, then King Lear loses much of its impact.
Guest actor Bruce Cromer could certainly have carried Cincinnati Shakespeare Company’s on the power of his own performance as Lear. Cromer, best known to Cincinnati audiences as Scrooge (and formerly Bob Cratchitt) in the Playhouse’s annual staging of A Christmas Carol, is a versatile actor. His performance as vicious and vile George in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? for Cincinnati Shakespeare in 2005 earned a Cincinnati Entertainment Award Best Actor nomination. With a mane of grey hair and a beard to match, he makes Lear a man simultaneously powerful and vulnerable, angry and poignant in fact, Cromer gives Lear a manic swing that’s vividly fearful.
But Cromer is also surrounded by a fine company of actors who populate a world where “these late eclipses portend no good to us.” The supporting cast makes Lear’s tragic downfall more potent and textured. Cincinnati Shakespeare’s three strongest females play his daughters: the often tender Corinne Mohlenhoff and Hayley Clark become selfish Goneril and hard-hearted Regan, telling the King what he wants to hear then viciously abandoning him.
Kelly Mengelkoch is the warm and loving Cordelia who cannot give voice to her love, a failing that invokes Lear’s wrath. Veteran actor Nick Rose (one of the company’s co-founders) returns to play Kent, Lear’s faithful retainer, with a muscular, irascible presence. Guest actor Skip Lundby is Gloucester, whose loyalty to Lear leads to a horrific physical maiming when his eyes are gouged out; Lundby contains the anger and horror to makes Gloucester all the more admirable.
Another company veteran, Giles Davies, adds to his rogue’s gallery of villains with a finely etched performance as the scheming bastard Edmund. Jeff Sanders, who excels in roles of honest integrity, is the wronged Edgar, concealing his identity by playing a madman. Matt Johnson, who sometimes takes roles over-the-top, plays Lear’s fool with a sadly poignant air (tethered to a strange automaton, a wind-up musician played by Sara Clark).
Director Brian Isaac Phillips uses uniquely choreographic elements to shape the tale: The stage, designed by Will Turbyne, is bare, but chairs are moved on and off with frequency. They are especially dramatic as the scene is set for Lear’s mad scene during a tempest on the moor: All 18 actors click fingers, slap hands on legs and tap feet to build a rising clamor of rain and storm. They toss chairs to one another, ending up seated with backs to the audience, while Cromer’s Lear stands atop a chair in their midst, railing against the elements. It’s an unusual staging that completely captures the insanity and power of the moment.
King Lear is a long play, three hours in this production. But Phillips moves it determinedly from scene to scene as Lear devolves from powerful king to broken, grief-stricken man. When Cromer’s Lear comes howling onstage in his final scene, carrying Cordelia’s dead body, it is impossible not to feel his pain. That’s how this emotional tale should work, and this production is indeed working. A friend of mine uses the word “fierce” to describe something that is exceptional. King Lear is fierce.
Critic
This article appears in Apr 2-8, 2008.
