Shakespeare’s “King Lear” is notoriously tricky to produce — first, there’s the overwhelming, existential darkness; then, there’s the complexity of the central role. Over the course of the play, Lear is at least three different Lears: the king who gives his kingdom away to his flattering daughters; the madman, whose humiliated mind breaks apart; and, eventually, after all his torment, the wise soul in sorrow.
Great actors can do one or even two of these aspects — Ian McKellen was a beautifully attenuated final Lear, and Glenda Jackson roared with convincing bile on the heath. But I’ve never seen one person who could do it all, and I have come to wonder if I ever will.
So in a swift, stunning “King Lear” now at La MaMa, the director Karin Coonrod makes her entire cast her Lear. (This Compagnia de’ Colombari production first played in New York in 2024; now it is running through Sunday.) Ten actors, all wearing pale, soiled greatcoats (designed by Oana Botez) and tall paper crowns (designed by Tine Kindermann) enter through the audience, trading Lear’s lines among themselves. When other characters speak, an actor removes the crown to become just one figure, say, Lear’s loyal nobleman Kent (Paul Pryce) or the Machiavellian Edmund (Julian Elijah Martinez), before donning the Lear-self again.
Coonrod trims and collates the play, so that the whole unwieldy tragedy skates by in two unbroken hours. She emphasizes moments of comedy — like a wonderful slapstick fight between a rude servant (Tony Torn) and the bluff Kent — and a kind of free-floating, impersonal cruelty.
The set, which is just an industrial plastic curtain stretched across La MaMa’s huge Ellen Stewart Theater, could be packed in a single garbage bag, and so Coonrod’s mood of twilight revelation comes entirely from the dim space (lit by Krista Smith) and beautifully placed moments of music by Frank London — the Fool, played by the vocalist Lukas Papenfusscline (a.k.a. leiken), intones his jokes in a mournful descant, his voice as eerie as a singing wineglass.
The ensemble, which speaks the verse with casual virtuosity, includes several theatrical heavyweights, including Michael Potts (“The Piano Lesson”); Tom Nelis (“Ragtime”); Torn (“Life and Trust”); and Jo Mei, who won an Obie last year for “Salesman 之死.” Together, they represent Lear’s divided mind. Potts gives Lear warm authority (no wonder Kent follows him!); Mei is openly scornful (her other role is the dastardly daughter Regan); and Torn, who whines when he shouts, shakes with childish anger whenever one of his daughters refuses a request. Mostly, though, the 10 Lears laugh at one another’s jokes. Lear, for one, thinks he’s hilarious.
The figure of a king is already a plurality. There’s the royal “we” of it all — “Know that we have divided in three our kingdom,” Lear tells his court — reflecting the medieval idea of a monarch as the embodiment of his many subjects, as well as God’s deputy on earth. But Coonrod is interested in showing us modern structures of power too. Of course, we the audience can see that when the ruler is at his most arrogant, he is also at his most alone. For Lear, at the beginning of this production, there’s literally no one on earth who is not himself.
For the show’s first half, the Lears walk among us, or bicker in the aisles. As Lear is forced to shed his retinue, follower by follower, actors drop out of the chorus. By the time he’s charging out into the storm, shouting, “Then let fall/your horrible pleasure” at the elements, he’s being played by three actors; at the end, he’s only one.
And here a gorgeous production turns sublime. Nelis is our last Lear, frail as a reed, and he stares straight ahead as his loved ones embrace him. The struggle to recognize them makes his narrow body shake. The final act of “King Lear” may be the most concentrated dose of pathos anywhere in drama, but, while I’ve seen at least a dozen productions, I’ve never actually found it too painful to watch. Nelis, though, trying to carry the impossible role without his fellow Lears, tore me to ribbons. How is it possible? How can one person bear all the suffering this play doles out? I admit, by this point, I was also thinking of myself.
King Lear Through Feb. 8 at La MaMa, Manhattan; lamama.org. Running time: 2 hours.
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