"Great Performances" King Lear Reviews

Filmed versions of the Royal Shakespearean Company’s productions are the stock and trade of PBS Great Performances series. It’s a proud tradition in which great actors play the greatest roles in adaptations of the play that take risks and lead to surprising results, both good and bad. Great Performances: King Lear delivers onto us a fantastic performance from Sir Ian McKellan in which he gets to show-off his grand range and utilize his musical vocal intonations to usher forth the Bard’s great words.

It’s essentially a filmed play, one that has been opened up and given more ornate sets to work with, but still an opened up and filmed stage production. This isn’t a hindrance, as it manages to still give us great scenes of raging storms, cavernous and labyrinthine castle interiors, and a shanty town of refugees. There is a visual splendor to these sets, they create a different world, a world that is positioned somewhere between 19th century Slavic designs and something that doesn’t seem entirely out of place in, say, Game of Thrones. The budget may be smaller, but it still turns out believable enough results.

But the real reason to watch King Lear is for the, well, great performances. Sylvester McCoy is a little offbeat as the Fool striking a discordant note amongst the rest of the cast, but he’s the exception to the rule. Philip Winchester and Romola Garai as Edmund and Cordelia are standouts amongst the supporting cast. Winchester using his good looks to make a more seductive and scheming Edmund, and Garai is practically the definition of sweetness and loyalty.

But like any of Shakespeare’s plays named after the central character(s), King Lear lives and dies by whomever takes on the role. Luckily, Sir Ian McKellan is a great actor, one of tremendous depth and range. He’s a little too young for the role, but that doesn’t matter. His acts out the transition from smugly satisfied king to distraught and emotionally disturbed fallen man. In the end what emerges is the portrait of a man who has become humbled, by his own hubris, forces outside of his control, the elements and his own daughters who would happily commit murder to gain the most power. It’s a staggering piece of character work which only made me appreciate more the gravitas and pathos he brings to roles such as Magneto and Gandalf. Sometimes just watching a wonderful artist at work is all you really need.