King Lear

Greetings again, all!! Today I am back to talk about the last show of our trip.😭Last night, we saw an abbreviated production of King Lear at The Other Place, and it was a very interesting experience. The show was performed entirely in Ukrainian and was put on by a group of non-professional actors who were forced to flee their regions of Ukraine after the Russian invasion. Despite all they went through, this group stayed in their home country and decided to make art that could impact and help people. They could have done any number of things with their grief, but they used it to tell an important story, which connects to their current situation. They provided people with entertainment during a terrifying time while still telling a story about war and its consequences, and I think that is beautiful. 

As someone who does not speak Ukrainian, I was very curious to see how I would respond to this performance and if I would be able to enjoy it, understand it, or be impacted by it. I was excited by the experience but was also, admittedly, a little hesitant. Sitting through and hour and half of Shakespeare in a Language you don’t know sounds a little daunting and exhausting. (And I say that as someone who loves Shakespeare. The words are just so important to his plays that it is difficult to imagine watching his plays when you can’t understand said words.) However, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed the production. I have my qualms with it, which I will discuss in a moment, but I was not as lost as I thought I might be, and I enjoyed some of the performances a great deal. It takes a lot of work to make a character compelling and understandable to an audience that doesn’t speak the language of the character, but the Fool managed to draw me in throughout the show.

Before discussing the Fool’s wonderful performance, I want to address the things I struggled with because I’d rather end with the good stuff. 

Some of the acting was a little hard to follow throughout the show. This was obviously in part due to the language gap, but the Fool proved that it is possible to convey the general meaning and intent behind the words across languages, and some of the other actors struggled to do this. For untrained, non-professionals, they were spectacular, but there were a lot of unnecessary, dramatic pauses that dragged the performance on for about 10-15 minutes longer than the planned 90 minute show. The pauses took me out because all the empty air made it hard to stay engaged and feel the importance of each moment. Some of the performances also felt a little two dimensional. The older sisters were, at times, putting on a persona of “mean girl” instead of playing action with clear motivation, and that made them feel less human and more like a caricature. I struggled to understand their desires or feelings past the surface level, and that made it difficult for me to take an interest in their part in the story. However, I will say that the caricature-ness of the performance kind of helps the audience to understand who they are to the story since we couldn’t understand the language. It can also be difficult to add the nuances to the characters when doing such an abbreviated version of the play, so I was not as hung up on the acting as I might have been in another show. 

My only other big qualms with this production were the lighting and sound design. I have such conflicting feelings about these elements because there were times when they were both highly effective, but there were also moments when they made it difficult to watch the show. The lighting and sound were very evocative, and they did a great job in conveying environment, differentiating between location, and creating a tone for the piece. However, during the storm and war sequences, the lighting was flashing for far too long. I liked the strobe element at first because it created a very cool visual effect with the fabric being moved on stage, but it kept flashing once the actors started speaking. This made it very difficult to see and focus on them, and with the show being in another language, seeing actors’ body language is more important than ever. It also went on long enough that it started messing with my eyes, and I was on the verge of getting a headache from it. I loved the concept, and I think the strobe sequences can still work in the show, but the length of time they went on made it very difficult to enjoy those scenes. I lost a lot of important moments because of that.

Likewise, the sound design during these moments was very loud. While that is arguably a great choice during the transition, as it envelops the audience in the sounds of the storms and war, the sound did not fade out enough once the actors began speaking again, so it was difficult to hear them. While I would not understand the language either way, I think I would have understood and kept up with parts of the story more if I had been able to better hear the actors’ inflection and voice changes. This was also an issue during some of the more mundane scenes as well. I loved the forest sounds during outdoor scenes and the sound of the flute when they were at court. They added ambiance, and they helped with differentiating location. However, when you make a decision to have sound underscoring a whole scene, it needs to be at a low enough volume level that it is not distracting and does not cover the actors’ voices, and this production had the sound going a little too loudly the whole time. 

I know that was a lot, but I do want to emphasize that the production was still so cool to watch. While I lost the impact of some moments due to the issues mentioned above, there were still scenes that had great emotional impact. The Fool did an incredible job, especially considering they were not a trained actor, and despite the flashy lights and loud sound, those design elements did help set the scene well throughout the show. I think the reason I enjoyed the Fool’s character so much is that the actor used physical comedy and body language very well. As I previously mentioned, when you don’t understand the language someone is speaking, the way they carry themselves becomes so much more important to understanding what is happening and what they are feeling. The Fool seemed to have a great understanding of that, and they leaned into the physical elements as a result. They always stole the spotlight in every scene, they had the best pacing, and they were the most fun and compelling character to watch. The Fool was also the main reason I could follow the show as well as I did because they did a good job in setting the tone of each scene, and they had the clearest relationships with each character. 

When it comes to capturing the essence of King Lear, I would say this production did a relatively good job. There were definitely moments of confusion regarding what was happening and how I or the characters were supposed to be feeling in response to the events. However, some of the stage pictures, particularly of King Lear and Cordelia, were beautiful and clearly conveyed tones of love, loss, tragedy, and the terrors of war. Whether I fully understood and loved the production or not, I could not help but be affected by what this theatre company is doing. They took their pain and tragedy and turned it into art, with the hopes of helping others. And they still brought stories of war into the light so people might understand a taste of the devastation they have faced. The actors were clearly grateful to be up on stage performing, and they had something to say. That alone made this production stand out among others I have seen, and I am glad I got to experience theatre in a new way.