King Lear - Almeida

You do Lear once in your life (maybe twice when Andrew Scott decides to have a crack at it) - this is not the time to go 😂😂

I mean don't not go now if you have a ticket - it's just my golden rule in life 😂 once, twice if Scott decides to have a go 🤷🏻‍♂️

Quite. And Danny Sapani was the best Macbeth I have ever seen. His Lear is not to be missed.

100% agree. For my money, this is the Shakespeare play that you can age with and you should revisit. I get more from it each time I see it, as I get closer in age to Lear.

If forced to pick (and no-one is, obviously) of the major plays I would say Hamlet is the ‘once or twice’ one.

There's a great book by R.A. Foakes: Hamlet Versus Lear: Cultural Politics and Shakespeare's Art (Cambridge, 1993), which discusses the two plays in depth, citing Hamlet as the focal point of reference at one time. It ultimately states: "Establishing a pecking order for Shakespeare's plays may be fun as a sort of academic game, but it a game for which the rules change all the time. I suspect that for the immediate future King Lear will continue to be regarded as the central achievement of Shakespeare, if only it speaks more largely than the other tragedies to the anxieties and problems of the modern word."

I've seen many Lears (Anthony Hopkins, Brian Cox, Alan Howard, Ian Holm, Jonathan Pryce, Frank Langella, Glenda Jackson, Simon Russell Beale) and look forward to Danny Sapani's. 

My ranking would be Othello, Macbeth, Lear then Hamlet 😝

😻😻😻😻As opposed to the majority of ‘Couchtown’ seats at the Almeida.

Saw this tonight, and I thought Danny Sapani was a exceptional Lear, especially in the first half.

Yael Farber brings her full spectrum of atmospherics to bear on the story as well as a few original takes on parts of the story.

There's a lot to love.

Some spoilers follow. . .

Sometimes directors come up with an overarching concept for a Shakespeare production, that enhances it, as Rupert Goold did for the Soviet Macbeth (it made all the terror make sense, as well as making it all even more terrifying), but that is rare, and Yael Farber doesn't manage to do that here.

What she does do is:-

(1) Bring her supreme sense of atmospherics (I still shudder at Tituba circling a crepuscular Old Vic in her production of the Crucible) - there's an onstage piano, occasional onstage violinists, a fair few accomplished singers in the cast (Gloria Obianyo, Fra Fee, Faith Omole, Clarke Peters), background music, sound effects, haze effects, wind effects, rain effects, ingenious uses of plastic, etc;

(2) Work in original bits and concepts here and there: eg:

(a) Gloria Obianyo's rude and defiant Cordelia was something special and made Danny Sapani's Lear's own tantrums make a lot of sense, in that she's a bit of a chip off the old block lol;

(b) The formalistic radio broadcast feel of the opening scene, whereby the characters are playing roles in a media show, rather than engaging with each other, contributed to the effectiveness of said Lear-Cordelia dynamic;

(c) Clarke Peters's Fool is more Sensei than Comedian, and he's a wonderful one and we absolutely don't get enough of him;

(d) there's a Globe on stage at the beginning of the Production. . .

Anyhow, Sapani's Lear is less a frail old man caught up in a storm, rather he IS the STORM, a whirlwind of confusion and rage, and it is as if the storm comes spiraling straight out of his psyche.

For me, this made for an uber-powerful and rousing first 2 hours, before the interval, but in the last 70 minutes, his lack of apparent physical frailty was only partially counterbalanced by his well-acted mental frailty, diluting the tragedy somewhat.

As far as the singing goes, the highlight for me was Gloria Obianyo's Cordelia's utterly haunting rendition of a song that sounds a LOT like Mariam Wallentin's theme tune for Ridley Scott's "Raised by Wolves," with both pieces evoking a sense of the circularity of existence, how we always and inevitably end up right where we began, a loop of creation and destruction.

As well as loving the insufficient appearances of Clarke Peter's Wise Fool, and Gloria Obianyo's stormy Cordelia, and Danny Sapani's even more torrential Lear, I thought Akiya Henry's Goneril was quite the unstoppable dynamo, Fra Fe's corrupting outsider of an Edmund (he wears the backpack he carries a lot more convincingly than Leo Bill's Horatio in the Cumberbatch Hamlet) sinisterly and louchely showed he was capable of a LOT more than sweet singing in musicals, and Hugo Bolton's Oswald was deliciously reminiscent of the youthful appearances of John Heffernan, swanning in and out of moments with a slightly camp scene-stealing aloofness.

All in all, I'd rate this 4 stars.

What time were you out Steve? Is it still 10.30/10.35 ish?

Ta.

There tonight at the “Official” opening.

Sadly disappointing, with only moments of Farber flair and detail.

Sapani’s Lear lacked rage, force, purpose. The “press conference” land distribution scene felt cliche and old hat. We got little sense of the why and wherefores, so had little to care about going on from there. His best bits were in the second half when mad. More of a mental illness than a physical rage. But Yaël hasn’t got the power out of Sapani that character needs.

The onstage violin players were nice, but it’s almost condescendingly, relentlessly underscored throughout, the worst when any emotional scenes arise. Not as bad as Oppenheimer in that respect, but getting close.

Gloria’s Cordelia was a standout: in trousers, as opposed to G&R’s long dresses; her father’s daughter, and in very little need of a man by her side. She was excellent.

Unfortunately Yaël has fallen into the trap of hiring singers who can act, and therefore we have Fra Fee launching into completely unnecessary songs, and, of course, taking his top off then finding it very difficult to work out how to put said top back on... Cordelia sings too, beautifully, but…why?

Clark Peter’s spectral Fool was great. Almost like a memory of a friend of Lear’s long gone. Edgar was fine. Gloucester likewise. (Why they’ve got him climbing a piano for a cliff is…?). Faith Omole’s Regan struggled…

Overall, this was awkwardly funny at times, lacked a true sense of place and time, and, to sadly & most deadly effect, in Sapani’s underpowered Lear, has no centrifugal focus or driving point. Yaël’s Macbeth wasn’t great because she miscast the leads. Here it felt like Sapani had the goods, but they’re still untapped in this production.

3 stars.

Yes they've been pretty good - four stars across the board from Times, Guardian, Telegraph, The Stage, FT...

www.telegraph.co.uk/theatre/what-to-see/king-lear-almeida-review-danny-sapani/
www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/king-lear-review-almeida-theatre-london-william-shakespeare-yael-farber-danny-sapani-clarke-peters-fra-fee
www.thetimes.co.uk/article/king-lear-theatre-review-almeida-london-shakespeare-7nbkz8p57
www.theguardian.com/stage/2024/feb/16/king-lear-review-yael-farbers-modern-dress-almeida
www.ft.com/content/f01fb8a8-46c1-456e-a9e1-d9dbaca1bd84

Most say that the two hours before the interval is really strong but the production peters out before the end.