Once More Into The Storm

A misbegotten King Lear that Glenda Jackson does not redeem.

- Sara Holdren

THERE IS A TRAGEDY happening at the Cort Theatre, but it’s not the tragedy of an overweening British monarch, his three daughters, and the gaping maw of nihilism opened up by his demand that they turn their love for him into a competition. It’s not the tragedy of a great king gone mad but rather of a great play that’s lost its wits and its way. After a royal amount of hype built on the promise of Glenda Jackson’s role defining performance, the painful truth is that Sam Gold’s King Lear is a hot, heavy mess. And more painful still, Jackson’s Lear fails to transcend it.

From the distracting, almost sloppy mishmash of modern costumes by Ann Roth to Miriam Buether’s misguidedly Trumpish golden cube of a set, the production feels aesthetically off-track from the very beginning, somehow both leaden and untethered. Inside this blingy box, Gold is pushing his actors to play for laughs whenever possible—not the deep, shaded laughter that bubbles up naturally as we witness the cruelties and struggles of “this great stage of fools,” but easy chuckles, the kind that pander to an audience and kneecap a text with mistrust. When Jackson’s Lear asks the fateful question of his daughters (“Which of you shall we say doth love us most?”), Goneril (Elizabeth Marvel) rises with a nervous smirk and an extended “Wellllllll” that asks for our giggles before she launches into her line: “I love you more than words can wield the matter.” Never mind that the first word of that line isn’t actually “Well” but “Sir”— anything for a joke.