I was taken aback, then intrigued, when asking a colleague  if he was going to see the new King Lear at the Globe, and he replied, “I’d rather eat my own feet.”

Never mind that the show is infinitely superior to the grandiose RSC production of Trevor Nunn with Ian McKellen in the title role (which, don’t get me wrong, wasn’t as bad as Germaine Greer peevishly proclaimed) but it was the combination of “I don’t care about the Globe” (the most successful theatre in London) and the fascinating new phraseology of boredom that got me.

The thing about this new Lear is the involvement of the audience in the story. They hang on every word and twist. They simply can’t believe the eye-gouging of Gloucester. They suck in their breath. They rub their eyes. Some of them may even eat their own feet.

Incidentally, isn’t it amazing that the great academic critic George Steiner, informed that he mistakenly said that Lear, instead of Gloucester, wandered blindly towards the edge of the cliffs of Dover, refused point blank to change a syllable in any subsequent edition of his seminal book The Death of Tragedy; perhaps he, too, would have rather eaten his own feet.

And at the Globe, it’s a big step up for a fine support actor, David Calder; an RSC Kent (to Robert Stephens’ 1993 Lear), he’s now the South Bank’s newest titan, and good on him. We’ll get to our feet, if not actually nibble at them.

But some feet are being eaten to avoid him. What would you do? Bite your nails, pick your nose, scratch your bottom? But eat your feet? I can understand wanting to eat somebody else’s feet — there’s a whole lot of fetishist activity going on this direction, I’m told — but eating your own must involve a gymnastic elasticity that is surely beyond most sedentary and unappetisingly overweight London theatre critics.

Mind you, as Prospero once said, My Foot, My Tutor, so maybe we can learn a lesson or too from my friend’s imprecation. Toe be or not toe be, that is the question.

I think we’re all funny about feet. We never quite know whether or not they’re a good thing. But I don’t think I would eat mine, or indeed anyone else’s, given that to do so was the only alternative to seeing a great play, beautifully produced and performed, at the Globe.  
 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 7th, 2008 at 4:05 pm and is filed under Michael Coveney. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.