This is the best televised KING LEAR I've seen since Laurence Olivier's spectacular all-star version in the mid-Eighties.
The cast is uniformly excellent. Ian McKellen shines as King Lear, both tearful and noble, and Romola Garai is radiant and tender as Cordelia. Frances Barber and Monica Dolan are both deliciously desirable and genuinely menacing as the scheming sisters, Regan and Goneril. Sylvester McCoy is a touching and witty fool, and Philip Winchester is a dangerously seductive Edmund.
Another reviewer raised an interesting question: in what era does this KING LEAR take place? Laurence Olivier's classic version was set in ancient England, with Stonehenge like backdrops and characters resplendent in heavy Celtic ornaments of gold and silver.
This story, however, is clearly meant to be set in Czarist Russia. Lear's hundred knights are re-imagined as singing, dancing, somersaulting Cossacks. His daughters wear delectable ball gowns. And Lear himself is clearly patterned on real-life Russian author Leo Tolstoy. The intriguing question is why Trevor Nunn went this route.
The answer lies in a classic literary essay, "Lear, Tolstoy and The Fool" by George Orwell. Orwell recounts how, in his last years, the one-time womanizer and literary lion Tolstoy became savagely puritanical, renouncing not only sex and alcohol but the literary classics of his youth. He even wrote a religious pamphlet denouncing Shakespeare as a depraved and immoral writer of the decadent past! Orwell does not mock Tolstoy for his opinions, but he does engage in some fascinating speculation about Tolstoy's hatred of Shakespeare. He points out that the last years of Tolstoy's life actually parallel the story of King Lear in uncanny detail. Just like Lear, Tolstoy attempted to renounce his privileges and power as a member of the Russian nobility. His children turned against him when he attempted to give away the family fortune to the poor. He fled from his own lands and died in poverty, accompanied by one faithful daughter.
All this makes for fascinating viewing, but in the final analysis it's the acting and directing that make this production a classic. The intimate use of the camera allows the viewer to go in depth with characters who are usually played as one dimensional monsters. Watch the way Monica Dolan's Regan reaches for her wine cup whenever she's nervous or upset, and you can easily understand what causes her eventual downfall. Watch how Goneril's henchman Oswald turns his back when Goneril is making out with handsome Edmund. Notice how the King of France is exasperated when Cordelia looks to Burgundy instead of him after Lear denounces her as an outcast. All of these characters grow in this sensitive film presentation of Shakespeare's greatest play.
