King Lear is a play of all kinds of madnesses, a blind man, a fool, a mad pretending to be mad and Lear, a man driven mad by the death of his daughters. It's one of Shakespeare's weightiest plays, asking questions about good and evil, duty, justice, love and the very nature of human existence.
Sir Derek Jacobi CBE, is one of that class of very great English ac-tors, the ones who have played all the great roles and have only become more realistic in them as they got older, needing less make up to play the ageing Lear this time around. He plays the role, this time around, as a poet and some what of a coward, a man beholden to the 'rightness' of things, who's 'right' world is blown up in his face.
And the
Donmar have pedigree with Shakespeare. And other great dramatists in fact. For staging them sparsely and clearly, and rolling out the text in perfectly tempered performances. Which are especially captivating in the small theatre.
These things put together mean that the
Donmar's Lear is a very special piece of theatre indeed. Probably one of those things that you'll speak about in your own decline (hopefully not into madness, hopefully just somewhere sunny and comfortable.).
