Chichester’s ‘King Lear’ in Brooklyn

Sounds like the weather forecast these days, doesn’t it? Only it’s coming from another force of nature: actor Frank Langella, raging against the worst “hurricanoe” of all — old age.

Langella acts up a storm in King Lear at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, especially for anyone about to retire. There’s a harsh lesson to be learned from Shakespeare’s classic. A parent makes a fatal mistake in estate planning — one that destroys his family and costs him his life.

At the play’s onset, Lear, at the height of his powers and the threshold of his waning years, gets it into his head to divest his real estate assets amongst his family members while he’s still alive. So he summons his three daughters, their husbands, suitors, and closest advisors to announce his intention to divide his kingdom.

But first he puts his daughters to a test. “Which of you loves me most?” he asks each of them. Daughters Goneril and Regan pass with flying colors, lavishing declarations of unqualified love and devotion. But Cordelia, the youngest (and Lear’s favorite), declares that she loves her father “according to my bond, no more no less.” Enraged by what he perceives to be her ingratitude, Lear disinherits Cordelia, banishes her, and divides his estate equally between his two seemingly servile daughters.

Rejected and humiliated

From that point on, it’s all downhill for Lear, and his precipitous plunge from all-powerful to powerless is dizzying in its velocity. He roams the land, expecting to be welcomed with open arms into the homes of his grateful daughters and sons-in-law who now own his real estate. Instead, they reject him, strip him of his retinue, humiliate him, and throw him out, alone, into the cold. Destitute and homeless, Lear wanders out on the heath in a raging storm, where he rails against the injustices that have been brought upon him, with only his Fool and the wild winds to hear him.

Center stage to this storm is a larger-than-life Frank Langella, at the top of his game at age 76, pulling out all the stops and offering a majestic Lear of blinding intensity and clarity. Towering over his cast, Langella brings a titanic power to Lear’s struggle against the indignities and injustices of old age. His range is astonishing. He plays the opening scene with his daughters with cunning charm, reveling in his power games. In sharp contrast, his sudden irrational outburst of anger against Cordelia comes like a thunderbolt from Zeus on Mount Olympus (“’Twere better not to have been born than to have pleased me better!”). When his loyal friend Kent tries to intercede, Lear banishes him, too (“Come not between the dragon and his wrath”).

As he careens back and forth between Goneril’s house and Regan’s, scorned and rejected by both, Langella’s Lear becomes a raging old lion, surrounded by other fierce flesh-eaters— his own daughters (“How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child”). At times he’s stunned by his humiliating loss of identity (“Who is it who can tell me who I am?”). At other times he begs to keep vestiges of his status (“O reason not the need”). Above all, he’s terrified (“O let me not be mad”).

Tragic reunion

Lear’s greatest rail against the injustices of old age comes in the great scene on the heath. Stripped of kingdom, royal raiments, shelter, and dignity, his cry of protest — “I am a man more sinned against than sinning” — rings out through the drenching onstage rainstorm.

Ultimately, Langella’s Lear is at his most moving in the mad scene at the Dover cliffs, where he is brought by Edgar, son of Gloucester (Lear’s friend, who is experiencing a similar fracturing of his own family and the “bond cracked ’twixt son and father”). There at the edge of the cliff he meets Gloucester, who has been brutally blinded by Albany, Regan’s husband (thanks to a cruel plot planned by Edmund, Gloucester’s bastard son). Langella plays his madness with a quiet, gentle, almost humorous touch. As he tenderly cradles the blind Gloucester in his arms, Lear weeps (“When we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools”). Next comes his reunion with Cordelia, bringing on a reawakening of his senses, only to be followed by the ultimate tragic outcome (“Howl, howl, howl”).

Director Angus Jackson has astutely staged his Lear on a spare set of rough grey wood, allowing Langella to take center stage and display his colorful actor’s plumage. Jackson’s clear, focused production features a strong pair of evil sisters (Catherine McCormack as Goneril, Lauren O’Neil as Regan) and, surprisingly, a young Fool (Harry Melling) who turns out to be the wisest I’ve yet seen.

I’ve seen many moving Lears — including those of Ian Holm, Tom Wilkinson, F. Murray Abraham, Ian McKellen, Christopher Plummer, and Sam Waterston. Langella’s will remain memorable to me for his powerful presence, charisma, clarity, humanity, and range, playing all the notes from proud and vain to volatile and irrational to humble and heartbroken.

In a time when life expectancy is longer, when we’re learning more about Alzheimer’s and other old-age afflictions, when we’re mustering all our scientific knowledge to stave off the inevitable, Lear’s final cry resonates with increasing intensity: “Never, never, never, never, never.”

To read a response by Dan Rottenberg, click here.