Word: caine
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Such apparent indecision on the director's part knocks the audience off balance. It doesn't help that Cain chooses the very middle of Act III--right before Lear enter's Poor Tom's hovel--for his intermission; the mounting horror in the theater suddenly dissipates when you buy your "Jamaica Cola" in the lobby, and it's difficult to take Lear's self-dramatizing declamation right after a desultory intermission conversation, or a trip to the rest rooms. Thus such atrocities as the general guffaw that followed Lear's "Didst thou give all to thy daughters?" last Thursday night...
Lebow rears his tall bulk up, out of the general confusion at ground level, and almost manages to clear away the smoke Cain's direction pours forth. This is a confident Lear, a rarity considering how many critics believe the role nearly unplayable. Lebow's accomplished command of the Shakespearean line never falters under the unreasonable demands of his role; try shouting "vaunt-couriers of oak-cleaving thunderbolts" sometime, for example, and see how easy...
Lebow doesn't bother to find a profoundly all-inclusive theory for his role; he brings a versatile, booming voice, a carefully controlled set of mannerisms, and a simple human magnetism to the stage, and struggles to maintain them in the face of Cain's slings and arrows. His personal triumph stands far above the "general woe" of the rest of the production...
Lear's entourage--Martha Jussaume's Cordelia, Tom Dinger's Fool, Richard McElvain's Kent--clearly got the word from Cain to "be loving," to be tender, to fit his interpretation of the play in the program notes. They hug each other a lot, hold each other's arms, "are supportive," as the psychologists say; they form pieta-like tableaux of familial affection. There's little wrong with that, and it might make a valid production of Lear someday, but all the actors--not just the nuclear family--would have to work towards realizing it, and the director would have...
...group of performers, and at least one actor of stature and brilliance who can use a play like Lear as a personal vehicle, it seems a cheat to squander the resources on half-baked ideas, directorial interpretations that aren't followed through, and "innovations" that clash with each other. Cain should either have moved in and molded a Lear to his liking, or sat back and let Lebow carry the evening...