Flashback 2006: King Lear, "I would not be mad"

Stacy Keach, left, as King Lear. (Photo courtesy of the Goodman Theatre)

     Many emails Monday from readers grateful for my pushback against muscular Christianity trying to wrestle public education to the ground and break its arm. One mentioned that this was the third letter of praise he had sent to a public figure, in his life, the first being to Christopher Plummer after seeing him in "King Lear." 
     Good company. My inclination was to send him, as thanks, my observations on Robert Falls' benchmark 2006 "King Lear," but realized I'd never posted it here. Let me fix that right away.

'I would not be mad. . .'

     Theater, like life, is fleeting. The most elaborate production is quickly gone, the sets broken down, the cast dispersed, never to return.
     But you can't see everything, not in a town like Chicago, where dramatic riches are being tossed from a stage somewhere almost every single night.
     Which is why I nearly missed "King Lear" at the Goodman, for the simple reason that "Hamlet" opened at Navy Pier a few days earlier. How much Shakespeare can I reasonably ask my wife to endure?
      As October clicked by, I began to feel a rising panic, the desperate urgency that grips my boys when they hear the receding jingle of the ice cream truck. My chance was slipping by. Still I dithered.
     Then the Wall Street Journal, a perfumed hankie jammed under its nose, panned the play as an "appallingly expensive desecration," as if it were footing the bill. "Oral sex, anal rape, male and female nudity, murder by garrote" — the Journal huffed, as if Shakespeare didn't stud his work with both killings and low puns about country matters.
     Could director Robert Falls have really stumbled that badly? I remember being awed at his "Hamlet" nearly a quarter century ago. It shocked, in a good way. When Ophelia came on stage, late in the play, hiking up her skirts and drawing on her face with lipstick, you recoiled, thinking, "She's crazy!" and then laughed at yourself because, duh, it's Ophelia.
     Was the Journal right? Or was my colleague Hedy Weiss, who praised the play, particularly Falls' decision to set it among the embers of post-Soviet Eastern Europe, which the Journal found a stunt?
     If I didn't see it, I'd never know.
     So I went, alone, having failed to entice anybody to go with me. Drove downtown in the snowstorm Thursday, ponied up the $26 to park and the $60 for a ticket, feeling slightly sheepish — some strange vestige of directorial brand loyalty. "Lear" isn't even one of my favorite Shakespeare plays.
     Or wasn't, until now.
     The good news is that the Journal's theater critic is as perceptive as its editorial writers, who consider George Bush in a class with Lincoln and Jesus. Without replicating Hedy's spot-on review, I'll note that the murderous dukes and lecherous ladies of "Lear" fit perfectly into the bloody post-Soviet chaos.
     At one point, I did turn my face away, revolted. But that was when Gloucester's eyes are ripped out, and isn't that what an audience should do at that point? Falls didn't write the scene — Shakespeare did. Falls just gave it the horror it deserves. I guess the Journal would have preferred his eyes be put out demurely, perhaps by a committee.
     The sad thing is that "King Lear" only runs for another week, though tickets are available. As I said, these things end far too soon.

          —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Oct. 15, 2006