Having initially been misinformed about
its running time, I had to abandon Yellow Earth Theatre's
King Lear at the interval of its
last performance in the RSC's Complete Works festival in order to stand
any chance of getting back to London the same night. (Why are rail
services to Stratford so unremittingly terrible?) I'm afraid I didn't
feel heartbroken to do so. While the first three acts were not by any
means bad, I got the impression that after their initial decision to
collaborate, David Tse Ka-Shing's Chinese-British company and the
Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre expected a momentum of ideas that did not
materialise. Zhou Yemang's Lear became a corporate kingpin in a
near-future Shanghai; the company delivered some lines in English,
others in Mandarin (largely in keeping with actors' respective
nationalities); the Fool became a chorus of inner voices; but nothing
else of note. I shan't be feeling obliged to catch up on the rest of
the show's UK tour.
The feeling of anticlimax might have been less had I not, that
afternoon, caught one of only four performances here of Claus Peymann's
magnificent 2001 Berliner Ensemble production of
Richard II. The central visual
metaphor may be overdone: an accretion of earth and water on Achim
Freyer's spare monochrome set rather belabours the point that faction
and civil war are turning the governance of England into a quagmire.
Much of the delivery – strongly declarative, from predominantly
white-made-up faces – may owe more to the company's Brechtian history
than to Stratford sensibilities. But it made its points (and, above
all, Shakespeare's) beautifully and powerfully. Michael Maertens may be
the finest Richard I have ever seen, Sam West and Kevin Spacey not
excepted. His is not a negligent king, simply an insufficiently
commanding one; he exudes a great emotional clarity at every instant,
and can find a wealth of resonance in a single word. Manfred Karge is a
looming, Machiavellian presence as the Duke of York, and there is even
a running gag in which Hanna Jürgens' oft-fainting Queen is
revived by water. Thomas Brasch's translation is described as "faithful
to the original, with additional wordplay" – boy, is there ever!
Love's Labour's Lost does not pun
or romp as much as Richard's exchange with the dying John of Gaunt. But
it is shot through with a sardonicism perfectly in keeping with a play
from which no-one emerges unsullied. A bleak, mordant delight.
Written for the Financial Times.