The divided crown: IndyShakes produces a theatrically vivid 'King Lear"

Among theater people, there might be reasonable suspicion of  English majors, particularly when it comes to evaluating productions of classic plays. With Shakespeare, literary study of the texts threatens to treat theatricality as secondary. I have fought against this tendency in me because understanding the Shakespeare canon as literature is the overwhelming focus in the classroom. I never had a teacher who concentrated on Shakespeare as theater.

It's  always helpful to remember that the Bard was a man of the theater who never took the trouble to have definitive texts published, necessitating the First Folio and keeping centuries of scholars occupied ever since.

That's enough throat-clearing to get into this account of how I took in "King Lear" on opening night in an IndyShakes production at Taggart Memorial Amphitheater in White River State Park.  It's clearly the job of anyone seeing a new production who has read the play to interpret production decisions. To me that task started with a noisy, show-biz opening in which Ryan Artzberger as Lear strode and pranced  onto the scene, leading a raucous procession of the cast, his arms waving high when he was not stopping occasionally to chat up visitors and generally indicate that this monarch is a real party guy. There is beer involved, whoops of joy and, on reaching the stage, command of a microphone on a stand in the robust manner of James Brown or Mick Jagger. What could this mean? 

King Lear's "this Bud's for you" entrance

Lear's decision to divide his kingdom among his three daughters to shelve any problem of succession sends the initial message that  kings just want to have fun, and the burdens of high authority are worth casting off. But the basic problem is that Shakespeare's Lear is not temperamentally a party animal. 

From the text, our first impression of him is that he is attempting to use his authority in a kingly, controlling way whose consequences he is not prepared to handle. Mortality is a consideration, as so often in Shakespeare: "'Tis our fast intent to shake all cares and business from our age, conferring them on younger strengths, while we unburthen'd crawl toward death." His speech shows a decent level of intelligence that is tragically limited by his vanity, compounded by a lack of insight into his daughters' characters and the political ramifications of his impending decision.

 I never made sense of this king's introductory outburst of ebullience, the image of which I couldn't shake. I gather we are to interpret Lear as foolish from the outset, easily prone to rage when opposed. Being stunned by Cordelia's refusal to add to the her sisters' fulsome declarations of love lasts barely a moment. He's immediately offended, and when the indignities to which he's subjected by Goneril and Regan and their husbands wise him up, he finally puts his crucial mistake into perspective. There are several fine speeches against  social inequality and hierarchy that come out of nowhere if we have taken Lear as impulsive, basically dumb, and as well-regulated as the stereotypical frat boy. But the actor's performance at length fully embodied the distraught reality of Lear's mental and physical suffering.

All the performances under the guidance of director Zack Neiditch have unfailing vigor and passion. Charles Goad's as Gloucester succeeded in the play's subplot as a noble character undermined more deceptively by his resentful, scheming son Edmond (Jamaal
McCray, reveling in villainy) than by any internal weakness. Most evil arises as a matter of taking advantage of an opportunity, so Anna Takayo's Goneril is by nature more bent on humiliating her father than the more easily led Regan (Liz Carrier), who has ulterior motives for everything she does once the game of dad-dumping is afoot. 

Kelsey VanVoorst as Lear's Fool has professional license to tease the king both directly and obliquely. Some of the character's complicated teasing has been fortunately trimmed in this production. For a display of steadfast loyalty to the king, the character of Kent is more heroic, though I was confused that the casting of Milicent Wright, so excellent in portraying good characters,  led to some gender inconsistency in how Kent was addressed and referred to. 

Their world upended: Lear comforts the blinded Gloucester.

The show's design took off spectacularly after intermission, as the storm that envelops Lear and brings to bear Edgar, the fugitive son of Gloucester, in the character of a madman (John Edmond, exuberantly manic) who frames every action. Zach Rosing's sound design undergirded many lines with menace and mystery and Laura Glover's lighting design was virtuosic and well-timed to partner with the onset of darkness. The plucking out of Gloucester's eyes had the horror-show intensity it needs; the set seemed drenched in blood-red. 

The play ends in a cataract of multiple deaths, the most pathetic of them being those of Cordelia, fiercely devoted in Alexandria Miles' portrayal,  and her father. This was so disturbing in the early history of this play that it was revised with a happy ending and thus performed. I've always been brought closest to tears by Cordelia's tender "No cause, no cause" in reply to Lear's assertion that, unlike her sisters, she has cause not to love him. It's the summit of magnanimity. I can't even think of "no cause, no cause" without feeling a bit weepy. 

I realize it's wrong to fetishize particular lines, as I perhaps also do with Lear's later realization that Cordelia will not return to him in life, upon which he issues that shattering fivefold "Never," which I haven't  heard (or imagined) rattled off as fast as Artzberger did it Thursday. It's among the things about this often-fascinating show I'll continue to ponder, as I will Lear's successive, dreamlike embrace of all three daughters standing upstage in a final tableau. Maybe that's as close to a hint of a happy ending as a 21st-century production of "King Lear" allows.