Shakespeare Expounded

Caroline Devlin, Richard Neale, Terence Wilton, Dale Rapley, and Rina Mahoney - the entire cast of King Lear.

No lover of Shakespeare could take Harvard's "Shakespeare Exploded" series seriously - but bardolators can get a fix of the sweet stuff out at Wellesley this weekend, where the Actors from the London Stage are performing a touring version of King Lear at 7 PM on Friday and Saturday night at Houghton Chapel.

It's even free.

AFTLS scales Shakespeare's Everest with just five climbers - three men and two women (above), all of whom, fortunately, know the lay of the land, and make it well up the slopes, if not quite to the pinnacle, of Shakespeare's most piercing tragedy. To be honest, the tiny cast size forces a few scenes into a straitjacket (the same talented bloke plays both Edmund and Edgar, for instance, resulting in some rather forced antics when the two do battle). But deft use of simple costumes and props (scarves, sashes, hats) allows the actors to slip in and out of character and interact with each other and their other roles with relative ease.

Indeed, this was probably the clearest and least impacted version of Lear I've ever seen. Although to be honest, it wasn't quite the best (that would probably be Brian Bedford's version at Stratford a few years back), although it ranks high among the local efforts of the past twenty years or so. It would be hard to argue, for instance, that lead Terence Wilton genuinely sank into madness as Lear, and as Goneril and Regan, Rina Mahoney and Caroline Devlin never came to full evil flower. Perhaps the strongest performances in the production belonged to Dale Rapley, who subtly and skillfully delineated his Kent and Gloucester, and Richard Neale, who brought a welcome, if somewhat broad, energy to both Edmund and Edgar (although he eventually grew shouty as both).

Above all, this production gave us Shakespeare shorn of concept and trend. Which is always something to be grateful for.