When the Mind Rebels

Lear as the aging, harsh military dictator.
Source: http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/shows/king-lear?play=1

Watching the National Theatre's production of King Lear in the sprawling Olivier Theatre, it was easy to be put off by the greatness of it. As can be expected from the man who directed the last James Bond movie, Sam Mendes doesn't hold back with a huge rotating stage, a larger than life statue of Lear, crashing thunder, a rising platform for Lear's hill in the storm, and a large company of men dressed as soldiers. This huge production was met by a huge performance by Simon Russell Beale as Lear, yelling most of his lines rather than speaking them. He appeared physically out of breath throughout much of the play simply because of the force of his performance.

Lear seeing Cordelia again, one of the few
 touching scenes of the play
Source: http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/shows
/king-lear?play=1

In my initial reactions of the play, I was put off by Beale's performance. The yelling, even though it increased the volume, certainly didn't improve the clarity of the lines for a character who has some of the most interesting and beautiful lines that Shakespeare wrote in my opinion. Beale's Lear also seemed over physical, slapping Regan's bottom after she finishes telling him she love him and grabbing Cordelia by the neck in his rage at her silence. When his madness comes on later in the first half of the play, I couldn't honestly say that I felt that bad for him. And while his encounters with Cordelia later in the play were emotional and his heartbreak at her death was almost palpable, I never felt fully sympathetic for him after his off-putting nature in the beginning of the play.

Cordelia looks on as Lear stares off blankly
in the background
Source: http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/
shows/king-lear?play=1

When I got back to my flat Monday night, I read the interview with Sam Mendes and Simon Russell Beale that was included in the play's program. While Mendes spoke mostly in the interview about the choice to portray Lear as a political dictator, Beale's discussion of his research made my harsh judgement of his character waver. Beale admitted that for this role, he did research outside of the standard contextual research an actor does for a role; he also researched the symptoms of dementia and adapted those into his performance of Lear. Suddenly, his choice to play Lear as harshly as he did made sense. In the first scene of the play, Beale's Lear is a man realizing that he may not be mentally capable of ruling a kingdom for much longer and knows he needs to pass both his kingdom and responsibility for his person onto his daughters. That voluntary relinquishment of control, followed by the seeming rejection by his youngest and favorite daughter, leads an already unstable and scared man to react violently.

 Having witnessed the effects of dementia personally, I began to see how he weaved subtle elements of the disease into his entire performance, even prior to Lear's scripted madness. The bursts of anger, physical aggression, rapid changes in vocal volumes, jumbled speech, shuffling gait, wandering movements, and dazed moments of clarity suddenly became much more familiar. I understood Cordelia's agony when her father did not recognize her when he first woke up, and I understood the fear in Lear's eyes when he uttered that he was "on a wheel of fire," chained to his mental illness.

Lear with the Fool in the storm
Source: http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/shows/
king-lear?play=1

Lear's dementia, if we decide to read his madness in that manner, places him onto this unnatural "wheel of fire," destroying the one part of him that can mediate his relation to both nature and culture, his mind. As he loses control of his mind, he returns into nature in the middle of an intense storm in what seems to be a display of his madness. But nature gives Lear the constancy that he can no longer hold onto in his mind. Just as I watched my grandfather wander into the woods in his most confused moments and find a few moments of lucidity out among the trees, the audience watches Lear try to find some clarity by entering back into nature in the fullest sense, stripping himself of his connections of culture as he strips himself of his clothes. New enclosed places like the hovel or the French camp are more disorienting for Lear than storm-swept nature, so he resists entering those places and escapes back into the nature that he knows and understands. Nature, even in its harshness, becomes a constant, comforting force for Lear, so that even in his maddest moments, he clings to nature with flowers in his hands. Unable to process ever-changing culture any longer, Lear looks to constant nature: the movement of time, the harshness of a storm, the touch of a flower, and the delight of gilded butterflies.