At 53 Danny Sapani is even younger than London’s last major Lear, Kenneth Branagh, but he’s far more forceful and moving in the role. A big, raging bear of a man who is also capable of great delicacy and pathos, he inhabits a dream-like and disjointed staging by Yaël Farber.
The South African director’s productions tend to start at Force Ten intensity then go up to 11, and to run long. This Lear lasts 210 minutes but is modulated in pace and tone. The emotion rings true, though the milieu is unclear and the long absences of major characters from the action feels more glaring than ever. The show is stuffed with potent moments and images, not all of which make sense or coalesce.
Lear’s family and his Fool, played with lugubrious panache by Clarke Peters, are black and the rest of the cast is white, though this seems incidental rather than pointed. Early hints at an African setting – a gazelle skull, a game hunt – evaporate.
Gloucester’s bastard son Edmund (Fra Fee) is a muscular Ulsterman who heralds most of his entrances by picking out a tune on an increasingly decrepit piano. Two gypsy violinists periodically haunt the action. The stage is hung with curtains of fine chains and there’s a constant drone or murmur on the soundtrack.
The most striking but unresolved notion is that the Fool is either a mystical entity – possibly the angel of death – or an alter ego for Lear. Certainly, only Lear can see him. Matthew Tennyson as Gloucester’s wronged, legitimate son Edgar is almost as other-worldly as the Fool when disguising himself as mad wretch Tom. In the storm scene he hoists a vast, handmade polythene canopy over Lear, who is prone in a tractor tyre: it resembles a medieval painting of a ship of fools. Edgar and Lear also share a dance, both in snug grey Y-fronts.
The volatility of Sapani’s King is flagged early when he kicks over microphones at the press conference announcing the bequest of his kingdom to his daughters. He’s infuriated by the iron spirit of the youngest, Cordelia, and there’s a hint of impropriety later in the way he traps his middle child, Regan, on his knee. Like all bullies, he’s frightened inside. “Let me not be mad” is spoken with soft anguish. Throughout, he slaps, smites or raps knuckles on his head.
The wicked sisters Regan and Goneril are overemphatically played and also enjoy a more physical relationship with Edmund than is normally shown on stage, but Gloria Obianyo’s Cordelia is superbly strong, with a fine soul voice.
There’s more music and more queasy comedy here than is typical in Lear, too. This is a strange, imperfect but intriguing take on Shakespeare’s play, in which Sapani triumphantly claims the central role.
Almeida Theatre, to March 30; almeida.co.uk
