Review: The Madness of King Lear, C (Venue 34)

HOW drastically is it possible to remix the text of King Lear while still retaining the essence of the original? That’s just one of many questions raised by this hugely inventive cut-and-paste job from CW Productions of Australia, which, like the troubled monarch, flits continually between sanity and madness.

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In an ingenious twist, we see Lear apparently reviewing the events of Shakespeare’s play with the benefit of hindsight, mocking other characters even as he recites their lines. Performed by just two actors – Leofric Kingsford-Smith as Lear and Ira Seidenstein as the Fool (although they play all the other roles as well) – this radical reimagining throws everything into the pot, from clowning to heavy metal to traditional Japanese dress; and although it remains more or less true to the chronology of the play, disembodied chunks of dialogue are forever popping up in unexpected places.

Sometimes these temporal shifts work brilliantly, as when Cordelia, on the scaffold about to be hanged, relives her father’s harsh words from Act One: “Better thou hadst not been born…” Elsewhere they do more to obfuscate than illuminate.

Incongruity reigns supreme throughout: Lear delivers his “terrors of the earth” rant to Rammstein’s rumbling dance-rock number, Du Hast Mich; and some of the flamboyant dance and movement sequences performed by Seidenstein jar so crashingly with Kingsford-Smith’s sonorous soliloquies they had a group of teenagers in the row behind me helpless with mirth.

Somehow, though, in spite of everything, this still feels like Lear – and that has as much to do with the quality of the performances as with the enduring power of the original.

Until 27 August. Today 5:30pm.