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Beate Hein Bennett
Through the Fog (of Time and War) “The Tragedy of King
Lear” January 23 – February 8, 2026
The cavernous but intimate space of the Ellen Stuart Theatre is the ideal theatrical locale for this profoundly reverberating tragedy. First performed by Shakespeare’s company, the King’s Men at King James I court on December 26, 1606. Shakepeare’s play had a rather checkered performance history. While it was deemed ‘unperformable’ by such literary 18th century luminaries as Samuel Johnson, the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley called it “the most perfect specimen of dramatic poetry existing in the world.” While the Jacobean audience was inured to the radicalism of tragic events and onstage violence, the 18th century of Sensibility and Enlightenment ameliorated Shakespeare’s tragic ending with the survival of Cordelia. Enter Karin Coonrod, founder/director of the Colombari company, who directed this production. She adapted the text--I assume with the dramaturg Gabrielle Hoyt-- into a fast paced uninterrupted two hour performance. The words are all Shakespeare’s, delivered with absolute clarity by everyone in the company in a relentless flood of images that bring the tragedy to its logical albeit horrendous conclusion.
There are several striking aspects of Ms. Coonrod’s directorial conception of this tragedy that emphasize not only the individual tragedies that happen in the play, but present the collective political disaster in Shakepeare’s text—the nihilism that lies in absolute power as it “absolutely corrupts” not only the person who holds absolute power but is sustained by those who feed parasitically from being in the aura of this power. She presents this collective moral morass of king and courtiers by dividing up the character of King Lear into multiple Lears, each crowned with a tall gilded paper crown. In the course of the performance, the number of Lears is reduced until at the end, bereft of crown and home, the old mad Lear is left as a “thing in itself”, a human being who finally “sees” the catastrophe he has unleashed by his blind and foolish self-pride. Ms. Coonrod’s conception presents a vision of this tragedy that is informed by the present political climate that has gripped much of the world in a destructive hold of self-interest and short-sighted profit at the cost of social health and the earth’s health. She has created sharp theatrical images to contour the dramatic motifs embedded in Shakespeare’s text and actions.
The creative design team supports this exciting production visually and aurally. The sound-scape composed by Frank London with sound design by Tye Hunt Fitzgerald underscores the dissonant proceedings of the tragedy. Lighting designers Krista Smith and Ethan Feil wash the space with a cold white light, while a slight fog seeps around the primary stage space, emphasizing the chill in the air (literally and figuratively). The cataclysmic storm flood, “five fathom and a half” deep that engulfs the exiles is created with special footlights and strobe-like effects. Oana Botez superb costume design features Jacobean period-accented costumes, mostly in shades of light gray, cream, or off-white with subtle grayish paint splotches that gives the characters a post-funereal aspect.
Last not least: The ensemble of actors that embodies the collective of perpetrators and victims is fully committed to each moment with the vocal and physical power and expressive range demanded by the text and the directorial vision, no matter where in the performance space each actor is placed—and the entire space is used, including the audience ramps and the surrounding balconies. The audience sits in the midst of this calamity as it spirals downward towards its ineluctable end.
In the beginning, all the actors play Lear with the golden crown but gradually specific actors also take on specific characters that drive the action forward. First there are Lear’s three daughters: Abigail Killeen plays the sycophantic uncharitable Goneril; Jo Mei is the sycophantic conniving Regan, Celeste Sena is the honest Cordelia who becomes the sacrificial lamb to truth. Then there is honest Kent, played with courageous intelligence, wicked irony and charm by Paul Pryce. Lear’s irrepressible Fool is played by Lukas Papenfusscline. The parallel tragic plot of Gloucester and his two sons is played out by Michael Potts as the elder Gloucester who is as blindly susceptible to his illegitimate son Edmund’s disinformation about his legitimate son Edgar as Lear is to his daughters’ betrayal. Julian Elijah Martinez plays Edmund with a mercurial Janus-like quality of pure evil and oily charm while Abigail C. Onwunali transforms herself from proper Edgar into poor Tom, the exile who wanders the heath along with the other exiles, loyal Kent, mad Lear, the Fool, and blinded Gloucester. Of the many secondary characters in Shakespeare’s play, Ms. Coonrod only keeps the misfortunate courtier Oswald, a “he who gets slapped” by everybody—a comic role that is masterfully handled by Tony Torn. Three Black Angels, Sasha Aronson, Peter Gomez and Paul Wellington clad in black, service the few prop changes in full sight. Paul Wellington also plays an angelic flute for blind Gloucester after he has jumped from the imaginary cliffs of Dover and envisions himself dead. The production pays at the end homage to the ancient Greek theatre in which the audience was witness to and judge of the tragic proceedings. The final tableaux is performed like a ritual in which all the actors form a chorus that gathers around dying Lear and dead Cordelia and his final lines are intoned by the whole ensemble as a chorus facing the audience. Thus “The Tragedy of King Lear” is experienced as a collective that includes US all—we are all a community of individual participants in the social contract that encompasses all living generations. We all have to confront moral/ethical choices as political individuals with regard to the community’s and the earth’s well-being and act on those choices. |
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