“Tis the time’s plague, when madmen lead the blind” remarks the newly blinded Earl of Gloucester as he reflects woefully not only on his own personal loss of control, but also on the troubled state of the Kingdom of Britain. Director Charles R. Miller understands that we are also no strangers to this sentiment, and in this production of William Shakespeare’s King Lear, draws awareness of our own American political turmoil, both historic and present. Working with The WordPlayers Theatre Company and Pellissippi State Community College’s Theater Department, Miller’s King Lear weaves quintessential moments of American political conflict together in a dramatic collage of unrest and fracture that demonstrates the restorative power of kindness and selflessness, messages universal to both the Bard’s and our time.
Audiences are greeted with a rather bleak-looking set design of tall, angular gray panels, courtesy of Set Designer and Technical Director Claude Hardy, that evoke an eerily expressionistic feeling; however, that bleakness comes alive in a modern, updated take on Lear’s political maneuvering, when the set pieces become the backgrounds for live-camera projections that mirror our media-fueled political landscape. King Lear himself, portrayed by the UT Clarence Brown alum Terry Weber, takes the big screen in a press-conference-esque divvying-up of his lands between his three daughters. He’s reaching old age and is letting his kingly prowess get the best of him, confusing flattery with true loyalty. The two married daughters, Goneril (portrayed by Raine Palmer) and Regan (Caroline King) have high stakes in their father’s handouts to bolster their own families’ holdings and resort to dishonest flattery for political and material gain. But the unwed Cordelia (Celeste Pelletier) refuses to play her father’s silly games and confronts him honestly, as she thinks a daughter should; she doesn’t want her father’s favor—she wants his love. Unfortunately, this works against her, and Lear disowns and banishes her, only to realize it is far too late to fix. The camera on stage captures the crumbling of the kingdom in real time, with Lear brushing away its gaze and the swarm of reporters as he angrily stomps around the stage in service uniform; the costuming for all characters, more militaristic than regal, conveys the connections that this play has to much of America’s political history.
Aside from the heavier thematic material, Miller also throws in a bit of comedic fun, because what is Shakespeare without his lighter comedic sub-plots? A MAGA-hat clad and Wrangler-overalled Earl of Kent in disguise (portrayed by Billy Kyle Roach) was an audience favorite, and I was surprised at how well a thick country accent serves the Bard’s Elizabethan prose: props to costume designer Ariana Dotson for these choices, and Kent’s later change into a pair of Carhartt overalls. The bodily humor enacted among Kent, the fool (Robert L. Borwic), and Edgar’s (Leo Lacamera) feigned madness as Tom o’Bedlam is reminiscent of The Three Stooges’ slapstick comedy, with much stumbling and rolling around and many props to assist: again, props to, well, Props, Caryss Johnson and Josh Leslie. Lear’s partying is framed as unchecked frat-bro golfing excess as he rolls onto stage in a golf cart overloaded with his polo-clad knights, and of course, who wouldn’t be annoyed at that showing up at your doorstep unannounced? This scene helps to humanize Goneril a little more than has been done in other productions. I actually sympathized with her; I wouldn’t want to have to feed and shelter these party bros, either!
Shakespeare’s best villains are the ones you sympathize with—and we get a very sympathetic Edmund from Josh Bigwood. He’s annoyed, he’s bratty, he’s sick of playing second fiddle to Edgar because of circumstances of his birth that he has no control over. Those moments where he ventures from noble anger into whiny complaining are some of his best, not only because they are Bigwood’s most expressive and creative acting moments, but also because we get it: making fun of someone sometimes feels really good, especially when we feel that person deserves it. He’s a victim of a system that his family and society have created and feels slighted when they try to blame it on external and unreachable forces, like the interference of planets or the alignment of the stars. But his villainy arises from the choices he makes and his self-serving, which allows him to climb the political ladder in the kingdom. Watching Edmund’s rise to power allows us to reflect on our own political affiliations, showing us that most of the time, power comes at a heavy expense.
That expense has been paid throughout American history. As Lear’s family becomes increasingly divided, so, too, do directorial choices reflect our own country’s division. Goneril and Albany’s supporters appear in blue; Regan and Cornwall’s in gray, evoking our own Civil War. Where both daughters bear American flag insignia on sashes, Edmund’s flag insignia is upside down, and his sash is double-sided—blue on one, gray on the other—which he can flip to satisfy whichever daughter he is attempting to woo and manipulate at any given moment. And Cordelia, clad in army fatigue green, serves as the middle ground, the honest and unwavering America we all dream of and strive for, who cares for her mentally ailing father clad in Vietnam-era uniform, the hard helmet on his head connoting that he has learned the hard way to search for love, not war, with a wreath of flowers around his neck. But nonetheless, battle erupts on the home front, with those bleak, gray expressionistic set pieces aflame with projected chaos—as stagehands wheel each piece around in a flurry, we get broken scenes of rioting, violence, swat shields and batons, glimpses of identifiable blue flags with a certain name in bold.
This production of King Lear reminds us that even though our current political situation and turmoil feels new, it really isn’t—that America has suffered political and personal fragmentation in the past. The hope of this production is that we can heal and carry on, but it may take checking ourselves for our own vanity, our own vulnerability to flattery and strategic lies, and a reliance on a fundamental quality of being human—the need for love and companionship outside of political influence or ties. If we can break down what keeps us apart from one another, then we can make a new start.
King Lear runs at Pellissippi State’s Clayton Performing Arts Center now until April 14th. Showtimes are Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 pm, with matinees on Sundays at 2:30 pm. Tickets are available at the box office before the show or on this website.
