PicoZ

THEATRE

King Lear ★★½

45downstairs to August 1, streaming online August 4-20

For all the misery they cause, lockdowns can inspire dauntless ambition in the performing arts. We saw it last year, when Suzanne Chaundy directed an excellent Das Rhinegold – prelude to only the second production of Wagner’s Ring Cycle here in living memory – at the Regent Theatre.

Melbourne Shakespeare Company, too, has emerged from the latest lockdown unbowed, mounting one of the Bard’s more challenging tragedies.

This indie King Lear has been delayed by two lockdowns in quick succession, and still, the players have been nothing short of heroic: stage-ready as soon as public health measures lifted, with an abbreviated live season at 45downstairs and a digital version of the performance streaming from Wednesday for anyone who missed out.

The apocalyptic overtones of Lear make it a timely play to revisit, and this breathless, 90-minute version in modern dress demonstrates sharply how far we’ve come in genderblind Shakespearean performance, since the weirdly insecure production of Queen Lear starring Robyn Nevin nearly a decade ago.

It’s a no-brainer for the Brits – with the likes of Glenda Jackson and Harriet Walter assaying Lear – and Australia has caught up (thanks in no small part to Kate Mulvany’s charming malevolence as Richard III at Bell Shakespeare) to the point that seeing Evelyn Krape as Lear and Anthea Davis as Gloucester feels entirely unremarkable.

Indeed, it is the hack-and-slash textual edit that’s the odd duck here.

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