A cool new Lear tool

Sometimes, my friends, serendipity and synchronicity are your friends.

Yesterday, while doing my daily fishing for my weekly podcast “This Week in Shakespeare,” I came across a news story announcing the Stratford (Canada) [Shakespeare] Festival‘s launch of a new online tool that supports their release of the recently captured production of King Lear.

Stratford Shakespeare Festival: Performance Plus (King Lear)
Stratford Shakespeare Festival: Performance Plus (King Lear)

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King Lear video capsule review: 1983, directed by Michael Elliott [Laurence Olivier]

Continuing our video capsule reviews for King Lear

In 1983, just a year after the very good (bordering on great, in my mind) BBC production, Granada Television produced another UK broadcast version, this one directed by Michael Elliott and starring arguably the most famous Shakespearean actor of the twentieth century, Laurence Olivier. Olivier was 75 when he appeared in this, and it would be his last Shakespearean role.

And he’s not the only heavy hitter in the production: John Hurt plays the Fool; Diana Rigg, Regan; Brian Cox, Burgundy; and Robert Lindsay (who appears in three of the BBC Complete Works productions), Edmund. With a pedigree like this, you’d expect this to be very, very good.

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King Lear video capsule review: 1974, directed by Tony Davenall [Patrick Magee]

Continuing our video capsule reviews for King Lear

In 1974, Thames Television produced a six-episode TV series of the play. The episodes themselves were only 20 minutes long, so that they could be shown in classrooms. This thus two-hour version was done under the helm of director Tony Davenall, with Patrick Magee (who played Cornwall in the one with Paul Scofield from just three years earlier) in the title role.

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King Lear video capsule review: 1998, directed by Richard Eyre [Ian Holm]

Continuing our video capsule reviews for King Lear

Just before the turn of the century–and I have ambivalence using that phrase… it’s kinda cool that I have the opportunity, kinda sucks that that makes me feel old–famed director Richard Eyre mounted production of King Lear for the National Theater in London with Ian Holm in the title role. It was successful enough for the BBC to restage it on a film set for television broadcast (in both the UK and the US, as part of Masterpiece Theater) in 1998.

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King Lear in the storm

Like I’ve mentioned before, it had been a long time since I last read King Lear. That’s a couple of decades worth of baggage. And into this reading, I brought that baggage, some preconceived, not quite textually supported notions about the play.

In particular, about the storm.

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King Lear video capsule review: 1971, directed by Grigori Kozintsev [Jüri Järvet]

Continuing our video capsule reviews for King Lear

Next up, we have the 1971 King Lear film by Russian filmmaker Grigori Kozintsev, who had directed an award-winning film version of Hamlet less than a decade earlier. Despite the relatively recent date, it’s a black and white film, which makes it feel older. The film was adapted by Kozinstev from a stage translation done back in 1949 by Boris Pasternak (yep, he of Doctor Zhivago and Nobel Prize fame), and completed with a score by Dmitri Shostakovich. [note: that earlier Hamlet also was from an earlier Pasternak translation and featured a Shostakovich score.]

courtesy: Amazon

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King Lear video capsule review: 1982, directed by Jonathan Miller [Michael Hordern]

Continuing our video capsule reviews for King Lear

Next is the 1982 BBC production that was part of the fifth season of their Complete Works series, directed by Jonathan Miller and starring Michael Hordern.

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King Lear: sources, part one

The most widely cited sources for Shakespeare’s King Lear are Holinshed’s Chronicles and an anonymous play, King Leir.

Let’s take a look at Holinshed first…

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King Lear video capsule review: 1953, directed by Peter Brook [Orson Welles]

Continuing our video capsule reviews for King Lear

In 1953, as part of the television series Omnibus, Peter Brook staged a very heavily edited version of King Lear with Orson Welles in the title role. How heavily edited, you might ask. How about 80 minutes long? 73 if you remove the introduction by Alistair Cooke. That’s way under half the length of most versions (like the Blessed version).

courtesy: DVDTalk.com

How does he accomplish this? By completely eliminating the Edgar/Edmund subplot. Impossible, some will say. Sacrilege, others will cry.

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