Lear At Last
The RSC’s King Lear and The Seagull open at last to the critics in Stratford-upon-Avon, so I drive up in the morning on the M1, leaving for the Warwick road after Watford Gap. The journey takes two hours door to door, which is not too bad. Stratford never really changes, but the Courtyard is a triumphant new success as the company’s permanent home until the re-built Royal Shakespeare Theatre opens in three years’ time.
No time for lunch before we plunge into King Lear at 1pm. Trevor Nunn’s production clears up a couple of points Shakespeare carelessly omitted to clarify: Lear’s poor Fool is hanged on stage by the revolting soldiers after the prophecy speech; and Kent’s final journey, “shortly to go,” is an exit line to suicide.
Ian McKellen does indeed strip off in the hovel to reveal what Germaine Greer termed (and she should know) “his impressive genitalia,” though I doubt if Sir Ian is thrilled by the warning posted to patrons in the foyer about “brief nudity.” It’s a whopper, ladies, even if one or two of my boastful colleagues muttered that things had not turned out quite so long as they had been led to expect. The shows themselves certainly are: three and a half hours for Lear — though after the opening funereally slow procession, the speaking is quite quick and agile throughout; and not far short of the same for The Seagull.
Frances Barber was sort of worth waiting for. But my actress of the day is Monica Dolan, superb as a whiplash Regan and a tragically alcoholic Masha in the Chekhov. Dinner in the Dirty Duck is a muted affair. My usual consort, Pam Harris, former manageress of the hostelry, Stratford’s own Mistress Quickly, has been laid low following a perforated ulcer. And her successor, jovial Sam Jackson, is recovering after a nasty cancer scare. But we make the best of it, with Sam on relatively cheerful form, and stalwart Stratfordian friends Maurice Robson (head of the RSC’s men’s costume department) — Maurice is a “she”, like Sam Marlowe of The Times — and Ruth Sainsbury (head cook and bottlewasher at the West End pub) joining me and Bill Hagerty of The Sun.
Sleep is deep at the Falcon Hotel, but my flabber is well and truly gasted by the service charge of ten pence per paper delivered to my room in the morning. Not only that, but the wretched place charges a service fee if you settle the bill with a credit card. This is almost as shameful a practice as that of West End managements charging booking fees on theatre tickets. Why stop there? Why not charge a facility fee for turning on the hot water tap?
