Using the Bard’s words to his own design and for his own ends, Colin Hurley has devised from King Lear a 70-minute solo performance that focuses on the King’s relationship with this daughters and sheds the stratagems that snake out from his pivotal lack of judgement.
There is no fourth wall, and the audience is the witness to his Lady Bountiful as he gives away his kingdom by chunks as reward for requisitioned flattery and adulation.
Through a blend of anger, reflection and mischievousness, Hurley turns us round from relegating Lear to base narcissism, an egotist who gets his comeuppance, to feeling kindly towards this imprudent old man, fondness even as one might have for an old uncle hoisted on his own petard.
It is no small achievement since, despite Hurley’s considerable paring of the text, he has retained the irascible king’s vile and misogynistic "Into her womb convey sterility" curse (on unaccommodating daughter Goneril), and the "Down from the waist they are Centaurs" speech in condemnation of women more generally.
I wasn't always certain I followed the segues, but the resourcefulness and physicality of the delivery belie the length and seriousness of the original whilst also keeping to its spirit, and telling a good story.
Prior acquaintance with the play might provoke some nods or smiles of familiarity, but it is not necessary to appreciate Hurley’s extraction which seems to emerge from Lear’s memory in moments of lucidity which he struggles to hang on to, rendering it gently moving.
With barely a set and only a single box of unexpected props, Hurley delivers a surprising, irresistibly human and comic Lear. This is more an ordinary man with a man’s vanities and vulnerabilities, yet there is an air of decayed nobility about him. Thanks to Hurley’s strong stage presence, this remnant of a lofty monarch remains sufficiently commanding when needed for cajoling the audience into assistance.
Lear’s Shadow is a consistently engaging distillate of Shakespeare’s iconic tragedy. It may come from behind the weighty tragedy, but it throws light onto its darkness.