Innovative Lear Is Less Than the Sum of Its Parts

The indefatigable Glenda Jackson returned to Broadway in Spring of 2019, reprising the role of King Lear in a ground-breaking production that emphasized the power of the spoken word.  Against the backdrop of a mottled gold set with a mirrored ceiling, a long banquet table is covered and set for a formal dinner with proper chairs at place settings that cover over half of the stage while a string quartet in formalwear plays the original score quietly in the back corner of stage right.   Goneril and Regan are sympathetic at first as both speak words of devotion for their father while Cordelia reserves some love for her future husband, refusing to enter her father’s oratory competition.  Her refusal to speak the words demanded of her put Cordelia at risk in a drama that emphasizes the power and potential destruction of the spoken word.  Goneril weeps during Lear’s curse in Act 1, Scene 4, genuinely mourning over her father’s torturous desire that nature, “Dry up in her the organs of increase, / And from her derogate body never spring / A babe to honor her,” and she seems to completely turn on Lear after his speech (293-5).  Thereafter, she and Regan control Lear by out-talking him, as their father lacks the wit or stamina to match them in verbal sparring matches after divesting himself of political power.

Jackson plays her Lear…