Review: KING LEAR at Little Theatre, University Of Adelaide

Reviewed by Ewart Shaw, Friday 16th August 2024.

This King Lear, in the intimate environment of the Little Theatre, is a triumph for the University of Adelaide Theatre Guild, and especially for two key players in Adelaide’s theatre scene, Michael Eustice, in the title role, and Brant Eustice, as director and Gloucester. Lear’s tantrums and his inevitable emotional collapse are heartbreaking up close, and the blinding of Gloucester, his anguished howls reverberating around the set, will crush you.

King Lear has suffered for too long with the superstar ethos. Gaden, Olivier, Gielgud, and Glenda Jackson have played the king. How did they howl those howls over Cordelia’s body? How did they say Never, Never, Never? On a crescendo, or quietly and insistently.

But there are two dysfunctional families. Lear has three daughters. One of whom is kind. Gloucester has two sons. One is good and one is bad. Banished Kent returns in disguise. Banished Edgar becomes poor Tom, and then a kind fisherman. Edmund tries his luck with two women, one of whom poisons the other and then stabs herself.

We take Shakespeare’s lead when we look around us. One president is an old man. Another contender is identifiably insane. The weakness of the King reflects and predicts the collapse of the state. The battle for his sanity and the battle for his kingdom are played out on a platform that becomes a throne room, a windswept heath, and a cliff top.

I quote the program ‘This production of King Lear is imagined in a broken future set among the ruins of our mostly forgotten civilisation. Remainders from the current world are repurposed. Society has regressed to a complicated hierarchy defined by violent power. It’s a post-apocalypse that’s circled back to the Early Middle Ages.’ That explains Tony Sampson, as Oswald, defending himself with a cricket bat.

The costumes are roughly stitched together from rags and clothes by Lisa K Lanzi, whose love and imagination are in every texture, every weave, and every colour. However, the transgender casting of Tracey Walker as the Duke of Albany (pronouns she and her) and husband to Georgia Stockham’s Goneril gives us two physically similar women draped in red velvets, with elaborate hair, looking rather like a couple of power lesbians. Rebecca Kemp, as Regan, draped in sparkles, is well matched with the bearded Tom Tassone as Cornwall. Rhoda Sylvester is the noble Cordelia, condemned by her honesty, saved from poverty by the King of France, but not from her sisters’ revenge. She has so little time on stage to make that name for herself but does it well. Indeed, there’s a theory that the Fool and Cordelia were played by the same actor, and Lear’s remark at the end of the play, ‘my poor fool is hanged’, refers to them both.

Sharon Malujlo, as the Duke of Kent, an illuminating portrait of loyalty, actually drew unexpected laughter when she disguised herself with a false moustache to follow her King.

Geoff Revell is perfect as the Fool, Lear’s conscience. Light of foot, he dances on the edge, and one quick gesture tells you he’s alert to Kent in disguise. He loves the audience and the audience in return loves him.

Gloucester has two sons, one legitimate, called the good Saxon name, Edgar, and one not, the Norman, named Edmund. After a brief appearance as the magnanimous King of France, Robert Baulderstone takes up the role of Edgar and the ragged mantle of Poor Tom, his disguise in exile. As Edgar, he is the victim of Edmund’s treachery. As Poor Tom he becomes guardian and guide to his blinded father, leading him, as Gloucester, thinks to a high cliff.

I got the feeling that a few lines were cut from Edgar’s speech on the top of the cliff but that sequence is one of the great moments in Shakespeare.

Sean Flierl is devastating as the seductive and treacherous Edmund. He engages with the audience making us complicit in his schemes, and you can see how both Goneril and Regan fall for him. Right at the start of the play, Shakespeare lets him tell us what we are about to see. ‘Unnaturalness between the child and the parent, death dearth, dissolutions of ancient amities, divisions in state, menaces and maledictions against the king and nobles, needless diffidences, banishment of friends, dissipation of cohorts, nuptial breaches and I know not’.

Four young actors make up the cast; Harry Passehl, Imogen Deller-Evans, Lizzie Zeuner, and Mike Leach, each of them witness to superlative performances.