Great Performances (TV Series) King Lear (2008) User Reviews

Brilliant film adaption

[dbborroughs · 9/10 · 26 December 2008]

Three hour film version of the recent stage production of Shakespeare's play starring Ian McKellen as Lear is a good representation of a great stage production. I saw this cast when they came to New York for a sold out run at The Brooklyn Academy of Music. To be honest I went for McKellen and not the play, which always seemed to elude me. However it wasn't long after the play started that I fell into it and for the first time truly understood what the Bard was getting at. Watching the cast on stage was like watching lightning. It was magical.

This production is probably as good a filmed representation of the show as we are likely to get. Stripped of the intermission and breaks for scene changes this play moves like the wind. While remaining theatrical, the show has been opened up with the addition of some sets and backdrops that bring the play closer to a real world setting. I'm not sure that it always works since it pulled me out of the play and the dark shadowy world of the castles where much of the play happens.

The performances are wonderful, with McKellen giving a stellar performance. I've seen several Lears and there is always a danger of doing something slightly wrong (Christopher Plummer's Lear started off insane and had nowhere to go) McKellen keeps the pitch right and we watch as the old fool totters into madness and beyond. Equally good is Sylvester McCoy as the Fool. Best known as the last Dr Who before the recent restart, his performance is a revelation as he makes you laugh while he breaks your heart. Its a revelation for those of us who never saw his stage work only his Doctor and the odd TV appearance.

One of the best Shakespeare adaptations to come down the pike it is a version that demands to be seen. Its a wonderful. If I have any reservations its that the film is not the play. This is not to knock the film, only that there is a magic in live theater that can't be captured, especially when the camera focuses your attention (one of the joys of the production on stage was the way things happened away from the central focus-things now lost as we are forced to look where director Trevor Nunn wants us to.) Again this is not to degrade this excellent production, its only to state that I think I would have liked this much more had I not seen the production in its original form. (Though to be honest I've seen this adaption a couple of times now and its gotten better with each viewing) When PBS, or whom ever, (it's a co production between Channel Four in England, WNET in New York and Nippon Television) runs this see it.

All right, but not stellar

[sarastro7 · 8/10 · 20 April 2009]

Except for his wonderful Twelfth Night movie, I must admit I've never really been impressed with Trevor Nunn's Shakespeare productions. They are too "heavy"; too pensive (despite the frequent emphasis on songs), and just too dull. Hate to say it, but that's the effect they have on me. What a yawn-fest his Merchant of Venice was! Can that play no longer be a comedy? It was far too serious in Al Pacino's 2004 version, too. I'm glad the Globe's 2007 production of it was properly comical!

Anyway, Nunn now tackles Lear, with Britain's second-greatest living actor in the title role (no. 1, to my mind, is Derek Jacobi, who to my knowledge has however never played Lear). It should have been good. And I suppose it is fair. McKellen's Lear is competent, but it falls short of being compelling, and ends up, like the rest of the cast, being merely passable. There is nothing really special here to distinguish this production. The Fool is good (good one, McCoy!), Kent is good (although one wonders if Nunn missed the point of what Kent says just before "His countenance likes me not", since he rather strangely threw those lines out), Edgar is good, Cordelia is good (although Garai's stage time is so minuscule that you could be forgiven for not recalling her presence at all), but the rest could all have been culled from some run-of-the-mill theater production without any particular vision. Nunn may have a vision here, but I'm certainly hard put to see it. If it's there, it doesn't come clearly across. Clocking in at nearly three hours, there's just not enough good and innovative theater here to hold the attention. Yawning and boredom creeps in.

Because of the good performances by some (though one only slightly above average by McKellen), I will be gracious and magnanimous and rate this production a 7 out of 10. I dare say it barely deserves it. Then again, putting on a good King Lear is difficult indeed. Many have tried, most have failed. I'm looking forward, of course, to the upcoming Hopkins version, hoping against hope that it might beat the 1983 Olivier version as the best yet. Olivier was a fantastic Lear (with the great mane of white hair he's supposed to have), and John Hurt was an astonishingly successful Fool. Kent and Gloucester were superb. Edgar and Edmund both were perfect. This is going to be the one to beat, or even live up to, for any future Lear production - unless of course something really innovative and unusual were to be tried, as with Taymor's Titus.

I will of course need to watch this Nunn Lear again once or twice, to assure myself that it really is as average as I felt on the first watching, but, I have many other things to watch, so it won't be anytime soon. Not a historic version, this.

To be leery of?

[hte-trasme · 18 September 2011]

This filmed version of the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of King Lear never does injustice to Shakespeare's great play ultimately lets as the universal tragedy it is, but the recorded production remains resolutely decent and rarely rises above that level.

Headliner Ian McKellen as Lear is consistently pretty good, but his performance is missing something that keeps him from the ranks of the greats in the role. He starts of brittle, feeble, and weak -- so the contrast with still-felt power of the once commanding king is not so keenly felt. Already tottering he has fewer places to go, and when he gets worked up he has a tendency to spit out his words, blubber, and become incomprehensible. Frances Barber and Monica Dolan are similarly somewhat one-dimensional in their portrayals of Goneril and Regan's villainy. Jonathan Hyde seems somewhat out of place in an odd performance as a Kent with many startled-seeming and some awkward deliveries.

Most memorable for me is the excellent choice of Sylvester McCoy in the role of the fool, who is goofy, wise, and melancholy. McCoy highlights the significance of the fool's choice to stay with Lear knowing his decline. I'm ambivalent on how necessary was the directorial choice to interpolate the scene of the fool's being hanged; at best it repeats information visually that we learn from Lear in the final scene, and at worst it removed ambiguity from it.

Ramola Garai also deserves praise as a very moving Cordelia, and William Gaunt, who begins as an unusually smooth and aristocratic Gloucester, making his later tortures the more affecting.

The whole film is shot in very monotonous dim lighting, making the intended locations of many scenes uncertain. I'm sure the intention was to disguise somewhat the studio-bound and stage-derived nature of the production and set an appropriately grim tone, but the lack of contrast quickly loses any good effect it might have.

There's nothing to point out here as incompetence and a few people stand out, but in all it is not the most memorable performance of Lear on record, and there are better ones on record.