Standing With His Daughters, Not the King

NEW YORK — Ensconced in the bulky pelt of an indeterminate beast, Antony Sher’s King Lear enters, separate and unequal, carried aloft in a smudged plexiglass box. This Lear looks mighty, adorned with heavy gold ornaments like a hip-hop Cousin Itt, and with an obedient court at his beck and call.

But the king does not sound all that assured lording it over retinue and family. A certain feebleness creeps into his voice when he demands declarations of love from his three daughters. The coat that looked so impressive at first glance now appears to engulf him, a small man in a big costume. A black disc is held up in front of the larger sunlike one looming over the set, like an eclipse overtaking a dying world.

This is not going to end well.

It is a fine introduction to the Gregory Doran production of “King Lear” that is now playing at the Brooklyn Academy of Music by way of the Royal Shakespeare Company. It is also a high-water mark: The staging throughout is never more than adept; then again, it is never less than that. It may sound like a backhanded compliment to praise this show as a good introductory “King Lear,” one you could take restless 10th-graders to, but it is not. As we know from many hapless homegrown attempts, making Shakespeare flow in a stylistically coherent production is not easy.

Doran is not interested in out-there interpretations or stage tricks, as we saw when BAM brought in his reverent take on Shakespeare’s “King and Country” tetralogy, where Sher portrayed Falstaff in the “Henry IV” plays. There aren’t any electronic songs blasting over powerful speakers — Ilona Sekacz’s vaguely period music, all ominous drum rolls and booming horns, is performed live by four musicians. And nobody is running around in fatigues: Niki Turner’s set and periodish costumes have an austere quality, which is saying something considering so many of the outfits feature variations on the gold-embroidered black so beloved in Miami nightclubs.

Rather, the director and his lead actor, partners in life and art, have a punctilious approach where language is everything. Every syllable here resonates with a crisp precision that feels earned, especially when it comes out of Sher’s mouth.

Yet there is something a little frustrating about a performance where every inflection, every gesture comes across as the calculated result of a lengthy thought process. When Lear raises his palms to the heavens in anguish, his chin tilting upward as if railing against the cruel gods who placed him in the pickle he himself created, the move (which is repeated a few times over the course of the evening) has an expressionist hammy quality usually found in silent films.

This may seem like a lot of ink to spend on one character, but if a production as a whole is not going to rethink a play, the title role is crucial. This is especially the case with King Lear, who is often mentioned as the Everest that actors of a certain age feel they must climb — there is a reason he has been tackled by Ian McKellen, Kevin Kline, Derek Jacobi, Frank Langella, Sam Waterston and John Lithgow, to mention the marquee names, over the past decade or so. (Even women have a go at it, as Glenda Jackson did in London a year and a half ago.)

The most magnetic performance on the Harvey Theater stage, however, is that of Paapa Essiedu as Edmund, the cunning bastard son of the Earl of Gloucester (David Troughton). A rising star in Britain, Essiedu brings to the role a cold deliberateness, a chillingly vacant stare. This Edmund is a sociopath incapable of empathy, a man executing Machiavellian calculations when everybody around him is governed by impulses. (It’s worth noting that shortly after this “Lear” is over, Essiedu will travel to the Kennedy Center in Washington to take on the title role in “Hamlet.”) In early scenes with Gloucester, you see that Edmund’s excitable father stands no chance.

You can also see why Edmund would appeal to Lear’s daughters Regan (Kelly Williams) and Goneril — whom an especially fine Nia Gwynne makes rather sympathetic. The grown children, in fact, are the most compelling element in a show that one might partly describe as a cautionary tale about fatherhood gone horribly wrong. Gloucester is all too quick to believe Edmund’s lies and cast off Edgar (Oliver Johnstone), the son who actually loves him. And that I started rooting for Goneril and, to a lesser extent, Regan is indicative, perhaps, of the unconscious influence of our current national mood. The sisters may have endured Lear’s arbitrary whims for years, and they have seen him reject his youngest daughter, Cordelia (Mimi Ndiweni), after she refused to praise him. When they turn against him — in Regan’s case, with a vengeful glee — their actions are of cruel, but understandable, villains.

Both patriarchs realize and regret their folly, but only after ordeals that involve Lear enduring the least effective storm scene I have ever seen staged, and Gloucester getting enucleated. Their amends are not too little, but in Lear’s case, they certainly are too late.

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Production Notes:

“King Lear”

Credits: By William Shakespeare; directed by Gregory Doran; sets and costumes by Niki Turner; lighting by Tim Mitchell; music by Ilona Sekacz; sound by Jonathan Ruddick; movement by Michael Ashcroft; fights by Bret Yount; stage manager, Maggie Mackay; American stage manager, Carol Avery; production manager, Carl Root; producer, Griselda Yorke. Presented by the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Joseph V. Melillo, executive producer.

Cast: Antony Sher (King Lear), Nia Gwynne (Goneril), Kelly Williams (Regan), Mimi Ndiweni (Cordelia), Clarence Smith (Duke of Albany), James Clyde (Duke of Cornwall), Buom Tihngang (King of France, Captain), Patrick Elue (Duke of Burgundy, Herald), Antony Byrne (Earl of Kent), David Troughton (Earl of Gloucester), Oliver Johnstone (Edgar), Paapa Essiedu (Edmund), Graham Turner (Fool), Byron Mondahl (Oswald), Kevin N. Golding (Curan, Doctor), John Omole (Lear’s Gentleman), Ewart James Walters (Old Man), Romayne Andrews (Servant/Messenger), James Cooney (Servant), Tracy-Anne Green (Servant), Whitney Kehinde (Messenger) and Esther Niles (Messenger).

Tickets: Through April 29 at BAM Harvey Theater, Brooklyn; 718-636-4100, bam.org. Running time: 3 hours, 15 minutes.