Melbourne Shakespeare Company’s King Lear is yet another show that has been interrupted by Covid, losing seventeen scheduled performances in the last lockdown. (It opened on May 27.) It’s a testament to the determination of the company, and Melbourne audiences’ hunger for live theatre, that this brief return season is sold out.

The performance starts hesitantly. No one feels grounded in this crucial first scene, which is unsurprising after the recent interruption, but it takes the length of the first act for the play to find its feet. The text has been given a zippy edit by director Ayesha Gibson, who has cut the unabridged text down from roughly two and a half hours to a digestible ninety minutes.

For better or worse, any production of King Lear is won or lost in the first scene. If the daughter’s protestations of love are not balanced well, if the king’s rage seems capricious, if the court is not shocked by his banishment of Cordelia and Kent, then all that follows is hard to believe. Here, it’s given too light a touch, so that it breezes past like a family tiff. The dreadful consequences of Lear’s pride subsequently fade into the background of Regan (Annabelle Tudor) and Goneril’s (Claire Nicholls) greed. Neither of the elder daughters ever seems sympathetic, so it’s hard to see them as more than two-dimensional tropes.

Stalwart of the Melbourne stage, Evelyn Krape is cast in the title role, and her performance draws inevitable comparisons to Robyn Nevin’s turn as the mad king in the MTC’s Queen Lear from 2012. Krape, like Nevin, is a national treasure. At least, she deserves to be. Nevertheless, the performance she gives here is too restrained. There’s an impishness to Krape’s Lear that seems at odds with the role. The defensive smile she wields to cover the king’s distress rarely cracks to show the hurt of his daughters’ betrayal, and when she rages at them in their houses, it sets the same emotional tone as her outbursts in the first scene. Lear should take us on more of an emotional journey as the king loses everything. Even at the end, the king seems more undone by grief than madness.

Melbourne Shakespeare Company’s production of King Lear (photograph by Chelsea Neate)

Kevin Hopkins as Kent, Don Bridges as the Fool, and Kayla Hamill as Edgar give the most grounded and relatable performances. Isabella Ferrer is a sweet and unadorned Cordelia, but is unfortunately swamped as the bombast of the play takes over. The standout performance, however, is given by Anthea Davis as Gloucester. The depths of grief she exposes as his world collapses around him, as his son betrays him and his former masters gouge his eyes out, is overwhelming. Even in some of her shortest lines there are moments of true pathos. As she whimpers, ‘I have served you since I was a child’, the real tragedy seems to be the unsung Gloucester’s.

The lighting (Alex Blackwell) is generally simple throughout, just a warm wash that sometimes isolates certain characters and moments. The flashes of red that signify murder are a little jarring given that so much else of the production isn’t in the same symbolist mode. It’s at its most affective during the storm scene, shifting between blue and green with flashes of white, while the noise of rain and wind build outside. Amid this, the cast carry bits of furniture, swinging them around, suggesting flotsam and jetsam on a wild night, and the broken swivel chairs are knocked around and left to swing wildly overhead.

This is a stylish production, but there are some niggling aspects that reflect on the direction. The ‘French’ accent affected by John Reed as France is particularly egregious. It’s wildly variable at best and, since no one else in the cast attempts an accent, it sticks out like a sore thumb. The accent even drew giggles from members of the audience seated near me, though it’s clearly not meant to be comical.

The cast become gradually dishevelled, shirts are untucked, unbuttoned, and eventually abandoned, until almost all the cast are left in singlets. They become as degraded as their situation, as their pride and greed have stripped them of the trappings of power.

The fight scenes (John Reed) are deftly choreographed, though the cast are a bit tentative, perhaps feeling their way back after lockdown. Likewise, though still well choreographed, the battle towards the end feels messy and unfocused.

As the production gathers momentum, the cast’s hesitancy becomes a fugue of wailing and moaning almost straying into melodrama, which doesn’t feel entirely earned. The pacing of the performances, and the edit, may be responsible here.

At a time when world politics takes place as much on social media as it does in parliaments, and is fuelled by self-interest and self-preservation, King Lear reads as a commentary on the temerity of power and the intransigence of partisanship. Each death drives home the moral that a house divided against itself cannot stand. This valiant production is hardly perfect, but it is an admirable attempt in the most trying circumstances.

King Lear (Melbourne Shakespeare Company) was performed at fortyfivedownstairs 4–18 August 2021.

This article is supported by the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund.