1.3, 2.4: Disorder'd, Debosh'd, and Bold

Man, Dale is amazing. Last weekend, he slipped while getting out of the shower and gave himself a concussion. When I saw him a couple of days later, I had a terrible fear that he'd lost his chops, and he would be too weak or fragile to perform a role as demanding as Lear. But he's bounced back, and then some: today we did two more scenes that are filled to the brim with royal ranting, screaming, howling, and cursing, and he was there for every second of it, stipping the paint with the power of his voice.

Mind you, he also has the gift of not taking himself too seriously as an actor. When he says to Goneril (of Regan), "When she shall hear this of thee, with her nails / She'll flay thy wolfish visage," up comes his hand, with his fingers like five tiny whips, poised to flay. "What an eccentric performance."

Tatyana has started to pick tunes for the Fool's doggerel songs, and has begun to experiment with assorted business that can exasperate Lear, his daughters, and his knights. They make quite a team: Lear bellowing, the Fool humming and skipping about, and Kent standing by all the while, barely concealing his exasperation with both of them. I think they're the secret second family at the heart of the play.

We also reassessed Lear's famous speech in the storm, and Dale found a very interesting approach to it--almost reversing the usual bellowing delivery.

Blow winds, and crack your cheeks; Rage, blow
You Cataracts, and Hurricanoes spout,
Till you have drench’d our Steeples, drown’d the Cocks.
You Sulph’rous and Thought-executing Fires,
Vaunt-couriers of Oak-cleaving Thunder-bolts,
Singe my white head. And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Strike flat the thick rotundity o’th’world,
Crack nature’s moulds, all seeds spill forth at once
That make ingrateful man!

Is Lear calling the lightning down upon himself? Is he suicidal? Does he, in his delusion, think he can control it? Maybe all of the above, a bit...but Dale seems more inclined to play Lear at this moment not as king or madman, but merely as bloody fed up. His daughters have spat upon him; now the Heavens are doing the same. Enough is enough. The result is a very bitter delivery, with the high-poetic language coming across as very self-conscious, as if to say, "Oh, look at you, 'oak cleaving thunderbolts,' well, la-de-da."

Trust me. It's much better when he does it than when I describe it.