Written & Directed by Dan Colley

Review by Marina Funcasta

Traverse Theatre

Perhaps Shakespeare’s bleakest tragedy, it will not surprise readers that Dan Colley’s adaptation of King Lear was nothing short of heart-wrenching. Fiercely confronting the devastating impact of estranged family dynamics and the complicated worlds of duties of care and dementia, I entered the Traverse 1 fully prepared for the ease of my first Sunday morning of Fringe to dissolve in front of my eyes.

And dissolve it did: slowly, as the production moved from a set-up reminiscent of XX’s ‘Motive and the Cue’, I witnessed a profound excavation of the horrors rumbling beneath the rehearsed surface. Poking holes into the suspension of disbelief required for the stage, it is funny that the very exposure of their falsity was aided by sound and lighting design – two theatrical mediums caught in the act, if you will. Created with great tenacity by Kevin Gleeson and Suzie Cummins respectively, the precision of each sound and light collision was clearly well thought out. Indeed, this is made immediately evident just by glancing at the programme – a team of four other specialists (tech manager Elon Kilkenny, AV designers Laura Rainsford and Ross Ryder, and composers Daniel McCauley) proceed Gleeson and Cummins in the list of credits, and credited they ought to be! Having seen Ramesh Ramepyappan’s Love Beyond last Fringe, it seems to me in a world brimming with conditions we can’t understand, let alone recreate for the stage, alternative semiotics and theatrical devices are becoming all the more precious in the representative effort of the stage.

I mention Rameyappan not just in passing, as having seen his production of Lear at the Traverse in early June, I consider it important to linger on what is attracting so many performers, and indeed the Traverse more largely, to this tragedy. As they acknowledge in their programme’s welcoming note, the challenging nature of our times begs for new stories – and yet, we fall trap to rewriting old ones? Colley’s production is well armed to tackle this question, using the metallic, seemingly stolid, conventionalities of Lear’s script and moulding them in his own direction. And let it be known, the powerful scenes that emerge guarantee tears that “scald like molten lead”.

Lead with great solemnity by Venetia Bowe, her lioness-like Lear roars from the second she is revealed behind the screen. Handing her ‘assistant’ a pocket mirror and a make-up brush, Bowe performs a performer with a defamiliarising ease. To be sure, though she be little, she is fierce: she bites her way through the first act, commanding her voice with impressive volume and tone. Peter Daly surfaces much more quietly, with an understated presence which repels the magnitude of space absorbed by Bowe. This may have been too stark a contrast if it weren’t for the kindly presence of Manus Halligan, who plays the generous, though deceiving, carer, standing as an emblem for the appealing, though perhaps troubling, dementia treatment known as ‘The Special Method’. Reminding me of Vincent Perez’s recent performance as the doctor in Hot Milk, Halligan establishes an eerie sort of moral high ground which invites the audience in. Performing a paraphrased version of the Shakespearean text for the opening of the adaptation, the audience, much like Joy, are left with no doubt that we are in safe hands.

What follows is a brutally honest downwards spiral through a dark and seemingly bottomless tunnel; as we descend, the mirrors of Shakespeare’s text crack to show the deeply Lost Lear within the mind forged manacles of Joy’s mind. Equally lost is her son, Connor, whose rage and resentment get entangled in devastating scenes of unsupported care. The fact that the lights can cut out, and we can leave this story behind, is not a privilege for many families who have been and continue to be affected by dementia: to be lost in a world where support and care often fall into underfunding is to live in a delusional world of false promises and thwarted pain. But the honesty of Dan Colley’s adaptation is a testament to the truth, and in so doing, rearranges the narrative. The unsung heroes, and the struggles of forgiveness, is the only glimmers of hope we are offered by this production. Whether this is enough is up to us to decide.

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