Shakespeare : La tragédie du Roi Lear

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1 Shakespeare : La tragédie du Roi Lear
Quelques lectures scéniques contemporaines 3/3 Laurent Fréchuret : 2007 Jean-François Sivadier : 2007 André Engel : 2006 reprise 2007 Anna Mele : tournée Europe 2007 Giorgio Srehler : 1972 reprise 1977 Antonio Calenda : 2004 (Teatro Stabile) Quelques visages contemporains de Lear Dossier Lear : autour de la version Fréchuret : notes d’intentions et retours critiques

2 Quelques Lear de la Royal Shakespeare Company
1955 1950 1953 1959 1959 1999

3 Quelques traitement du Fou à la Royal Shakespeare Company
1982 1950 1958 1982 2001

4 Un Lear dans la tradition kitsch…
Edwin Forrest 1806 – 1872 Un Lear dans la tradition kitsch… Acteur américain né à Philadelphie de parents allemands et écossais, il triomphe dans le rôle d’Othello en 1826, et devient un tragédien shakespearien. Il ira jouer à Londres au Drury Lane, et sera le rival de Charles Macready que le public anglais lui préfère.

5 Charles H. Cameron en Roi Lear (1872) Photographié par Julia Margaret Cameron

6 Sir John Gielgud figure un cas d’espèce, il a 26 ans lorsqu’il crée son Lear à l’Old Vic, il le reprendra en 1940 dans une interprétation qui triomphe, puis en En 1955 il accepte de jouer dans une version mise en scène par le sculpteur Isamu Noguchi dans un costume pour le moins controversé. A 90 ans il enregistre pour la radio une version mémorable. ohn Gielgud ( ) made his first attempt at Lear at the age of 26 (pictured) as his farewell performance after two remarkably successful seasons at the Old Vic, and returned to it in a 1940 production that was directed by the legendary Harley Granville-Barker, which prompted James Agate to write that Gielgud's performance was one of "great beauty, imagination, sensitiveness, understanding, executive virtuosity and control." The London Times wrote "The particular strength of the performance rests upon the boldness - bold recognition from the first that this tragedy we are borne through realms of fantasy in which cold reason cannot find satisfaction. Mt. Gielgud concerns himself little with the corporal infirmities of the old King. Such detail he sketches in lightly and adequately, but they are not to be suffered to become a load fettering him to a realistic plane. He trusts the verse and had the power to speak it, as a solitary silver figure in the dark loneliness, he speaks the storm, and his trust is never at any vital point betrayed." Gielgud played the role again in 1950, and finally in a controversial 1955 production (pictured) designed by sculptor Isamu Noguchi. Gielgud accepted the role after Michael Redgrave turned it down (after being quoted as saying "when I play Lear, I'll play my Lear and not Noguchi's Lear") and co-directed with George Divine, but ultimately felt he made an error in judgement in allowing Noguchi (who had never designed costumes before) to clothe the actors in outfits that were impossible to move or act in (many of the critics referred to Lear's line "I do not like the fashion of your garments"). The production received mixed reviews in London (where some critics admired its inventiveness but most skwewered it on the basis of Noguchi's design), although when it later toured Europe in repertory with Gielgud's perennial Much Ado About Nothing reviewers embraced it as a bold and original staging and which Peter Brook credited as serving as the genesis for his own celebrated production with Paul Scofield in 1962. Gielgud considering returning to the role many times in the ensuing years, particularly in the 1980s, but abandoned the project so as not to compete with Laurence Olivier's brilliant television production. He did finally play Lear in a 1994 radio telecast in celebration of his 90th birthday opposite an All Star Cast that included Judi Dench, Kenneth Branagh, Derek Jacobi and Simon Russell Beale.

7 Sir Laurence Olivier (Lear)
et Alec Guinness (le Fou) en 1946

8 Orson Welles donne une interprétation de Lear à New York en 1958, se brise la cheville et joue les dernières représentations en fauteuil roulant ! Mais son génie polymorphe et tonitruant donnera sa pleine mesure dans l’univers shakespearien par l’inoubliable Falstaff qu’il dirige et incarne en 1966 dans un film ou il « monte » ce personnage à partir d’emprunts à Henry IV, Henry V et Les Joyeuses commères de Windsor. King Lear was a project that interested Orson Welles for his entire career; he staged it as a schoolboy, tried to stage it three further times, once in 1937, and again in 1945 before mounting a production in 1956; he adapted it for radio in 1945, played the role in Peter Brook's 1953 televised adaptation, and was trying to mount a film version at the time of his death in Welles' 1956 theatrical production was his final American theater appearance, and it was by many accounts a total disaster, running only 21 performances while failing to help Welles establish a classical repertory company in New York, as he had envisioned doing with the Mercury Theater in the late 30s. (continued below) Welles was asked by Jean Dalrymple, director of the City Center of New York, to produce a play for the Center. Having turned down various offers from Dalrymple over the years prior, he agreed to work with the Center in producing Moby Dick Rehearsed and King Lear. Moby Dick's producers, Martin Gabel and Henry Margolis, balked at Welles' desire to produce the play off Broadway however, and Welles consequently refused to produce it at all. He moved on to Lear, and stated in interviews that he felt the play should be performed, despite the rarity of productions within America. Welles' production allowed him to get back into the spotlight in the theater world, where he had been without a success, major or minor, since Native Son in Around the World in 80 Days, despite good reception from audiences and a handful of critics, had been a financial disaster, and his 1948 Macbeth functioned largely as a rehearsal for the film that followed shortly thereafter. With the glory days of the Mercury nearly 20 years behind him, Welles surely longed for a hit, both critical and financial, that would propel him back to the forefront of the theater world. Whether his heart would truly have been in it for the long run is another matter; the stories of Welles quickly losing interest in a project are legion, and he didn't have someone like John Houseman to run the business side of things, which was a vital element for someone like Welles whose business acumen was virtually nil. Further, more stringent union rules would have forbade Welles to drill actors through the night, as he had done in the days of the Mercury and had done in London with Moby Dick. For someone whose interest in making the show a success was obvious, Welles' actions during the rehearsal time are questionable. The two most questionable actions Welles took were his own lack of rehearsal, and the complexity of the staging. Both of these made a smooth production difficult. The first was occasioned by Welles' desire to see and critique the other actors in their performances; watching the rehearsals from the seats instead of the stage, Welles could conduct the actors in a way that being with them onstage would not allow. The drawback was that his own performance as the lead suffered, since he wasn't rehearsing with the cast or the scenery. The scenery was composed of platforms of varying heights and sizes, which could be moved throughout the performance. Welles' desire to use a minimum of lighting made safety an issue, and indeed, Welles' own sprained ankle came from falling off one of these platforms the night before the opening, requiring him to perform opening night with a cast, during which he injured his other ankle. This second injury caused Welles to cancel the second night performance and perform in a wheelchair the rest of the run. The second night's cancellation turned what could have been a disaster into a small triumph for Welles; coming on stage, dressed in a suit and seated in a wheelchair, Welles explained his injuries to the audience and offered to perform speeches from the play and answer audience questions. Those who wished for a refund could get one; reports said that only a few hundred of the sellout crowd of nearly 2,800 took refunds. The play resumed the next night. Reviews were largely negative, and the production struggled through 21 performances before closing. A couple cast members wondered if Welles' inuuries were faked in order to mask his own lack of preparation; Viveca Lindfors, who clashed with Welles during the production (resulting in Welles reducing their scenes together), wrote in her autobiography that at the cast farewell party, Welles, who had been coming and going in his wheelchair, got up and walked out on his own. There are reports of Welles drinking heavily during performances as well. All in all, between Welles' injuries, the middling to poor reviews, performance problems, and Welles' lack of coherence with the cast, King Lear was a disaster all around, and would mark the end of his American theatrical career. What had begun as the hopeful first step in a new era for the Mercury ended as the exact opposite. (Information for this page came from The Theater of Orson Welles, , an unpublished dissertation by Aleksandra Jovicevic [1991], and Citizen Welles by Frank Brady.) Jeanne Moreau et Orson Wells dans Falstaff

9 1962 : Peter Brook : « The last line of the play is unique in Shakespeare. All his other plays suggest an optimistic future; no matter how terrible the events that have passed, there is hope that they will not happen again. In Lear, the last line poses a question. Edgar says: 'We that are young shall never see so much, nor live so long,' and no one can give a simple explanation of this. It is loaded with [unexplainable] hints of tremendous meanings. It forces you to look at a young man, his eye naturally on the future, who has lived through the most horrifying times. » Peter Brook Diana Rigg : Cordélia

10 1962 :MES Peter Brook : Diana Rigg (Cordélia) et Paul Scofield, (Paul Scofield) avec Gloucester (Alan Webb), Royal Shakespeare Company

11 1962 – P Brook : Cornouailles (Tony Church) crevant les yeux de Gloucester devant Reagan (III,7)
Paul Scofield reprend le rôle dans l’adaptation cinématographique de Peter Brook en 1970 (pour la télévision Danoise)

12 Ran une adaptation cinématographique « samouraï » du Roi Lear par le maître Japonais Akira Kurosawa qui a 73 ans. Ran is Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa's reinterpretation of William Shakespeare's King Lear. The Lear counterpart is an elderly 16th-century warlord (Tatsuya Nakadai), who announces that he's about to divide his kingdom equally among his three sons. In his dotage, he falls prey to the false flattery of his treacherous sons (Akira Terao and Jinpachi Nezu), while banishing his youngest son (Daisuke Ryu), the only member of the family who loves him enough to tell him the unvarnished truth. Thanks to his foolish pride, his domain collapses under its own weight as the sons battle each other over total control. Kurosawa's first film in five years, Ran had been in the planning stages for twice that long; Kurosawa had storyboarded the project with a series of vivid color paintings that have since been published in book form in England. The battle scenes are staged with such brutal vigor that it's hard to imagine that the director was 75 years old at the time. This 160-minute historical epic won several international awards, but it was not a hit in Japan, and it would be five more years before Kurosawa would be able to finance another picture. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide Review Overwhelming in scope and magnificent in visual style, Ran is less an adaptation of Shakespeare's King Lear than an amplification of its themes of greed, betrayal, and honor. Though set during the turbulent Muromachi period in Japan, the film achieves a surprising universality by perfectly marrying style and content. Master director Akira Kurosawa distilled the play and stripped it of its numerous lengthy speeches (Kurosawa accused Shakespeare of being too wordy). In their stead, he packed the film with images pregnant with resonance and visual poetry. Deftly employing all of the techniques associated with his long career, Kurosawa creates a powerful portrayal of a kingdom coming apart at the seams through such techniques as dynamic, painterly compositions that emphasize depth of field; striking, expressionistic color; and brilliant sound design. In one scene, Kurosawa confronts the viewer with a silent, dream-like montage of human brutality: concubines committing ritual suicide, soldiers porcupined with arrows, spilling blood, and grisly dismembered limbs. In that same scene, the ghost-like Hidetora, Kurosawa's Lear, witnesses the armies of his two sons, one bedecked in brilliant yellow, the other in equally vibrant red, clash on the black slopes of Mount Fuji. Few films have imbued battle sequences with such beauty and with such horror. Tatsuya Nakadai gives perhaps the finest performance of his long career as the former vainglorious tyrant who slowly fills with shame and regret as his world comes crashing down, while Mieko Harada is flawlessly ruthless as the revenge seeking Lady Kaede. A brilliant cinematic feast ten years in the making, Ran proved to be the last masterwork by one of the greatest filmmakers. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

13 Talawa Theatre Company was founded in 1985 by Yvonne Brewster, Mona Hammond, Carmen Monroe and Inigo Espejel. Their mission is to provide opportunities for black actors, to use black culture to enrich British theatre, and to enlarge theatre audiences among the black community. Yvonne Brewster explained where the name Talawa came from: 'In Jamaica, we have a saying, “She may be small but look how she's talawa”, meaning gutsy, feisty'. The majority of the cast in this production of King Lear were black and the production made specific reference to their ethnicity - by using the rhythms of rap in certain scenes, for example. Talawa and the Theatre Museum used the production as the inspiration for a set of workshops for schools and colleges. In addition, a video of the production was made as a contribution to the Theatre Museum's National Video Archive of Performance and can be watched in the Museum's Study Room. Created: 1994 This object features in the Drama Guided Tour Description: Black and white photograph by Graham Brandon Date Created: 1994 Creator: Graham Brandon (Photographer) Associated People: Ben Thomas (Depicted) Lear (Character depicted) William Shakespeare (Associated) Associated Companies: Talawa Theatre Company (Associated, Depicted) PPUK Number: 1404 Collection: Graham Le Lear de Ben Thomas (1994) Une interprétation qui fit date par le Talawa Theatre Company fondée en 1885 par Yvonne Brewster, Mona Hammond, Carmen Monroe et Inigo Espejel pour enrichir le théâtre anglais d’une culture afro et conquérir aussi le public noir. Exérience étonnate ou certaines scènes sont rythmées en rap jamaïcain.

14 n 1999, the RSC engaged in its first international collaboration, working with the highly respected Japanese theatre director Yukio Ninagawa on a production of King Lear. Ninagawa had previously directed Japanese versions of Macbeth and The Tempest in the UK, and is committed to staging all 37 of Shakespeare's dramas over 13 years at his base, the Saitama Arts Theatre, north of Tokyo. The first three, Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night and Richard III, were played in Japanese to a Japanese audience. King Lear was the first to be performed in English, first in Japan, and then at the Barbican in London. For this marriage of East and West, the quintessentially English Nigel Hawthorne took the part of the king, whose betrayal by his daughters drives him to madness. From day one, rehearsals were more akin to a traditional dress rehearsal: it was assumed that the actors knew their lines, and the purpose was to refine physical interaction and their understanding of the set - inspired by Japanese Noh and Kabuki theatre, with the Rising Sun as a backdrop. Created: 1999 This object features in the Dra Description: Black and white photograph Date Created: 1999 Creator: Graham Brandon (Photographer) Associated People: Nigel Hawthorne (Depicted) Lear (Character depicted) William Shakespeare (Playwright) Yukio Ninagawa (Director) Associated Companies: Royal Shakespeare Company (Associated, Depicted) Barbican Theatre (Associated) PPUK Number: 2055 Le Lear de Nigel Hawthorne (1999 à la RSC) dans la mise en scène de Yukio Ninagawa du Saitama Arts Theatre de Tokyo. Cette première collaboration internationale qui tentait de marier la culture de la représentation japonaise à l’univers de Shakespeare. Le jeu d’une grande précision physique empruntae les codes du Nô et du Kabuki, dans des costumes traditionnels.

15 Le Lear de Christopher Plummer (canadien né en 1929) reçoit en 2003 reçoit un Tony Award pour son interprétation, créée à Stardford et qui triomphe à Broadway.

16 McKellen deftly portrayed King Lear’s descent into madness with brevity and humor. He exudes poignancy, even in the opening scenes of the play when Lear attempts lucidity. He brutally mistreats his daughter to establish his power, but one’s heart still goes out to this mistaken old man. McKellen’s intonations and slight gestures foreshadow the growing conflict of the play, capturing the image of regality disintegrating into a doddering old man. The court fool and faithful companion, played by Sylvester McCoy, added just enough humor to the dark moments of the play. The actor could have easily gone over the top with his performance, creating a grotesque and silly character. But he found a beautiful balance; his jester garnered a sense of empathy while fully exploiting the potential humor in his words ** Arguably, King Lear is the most difficult of Shakespeare's tragedies to perform because it is some heady stuff. Certifiable insanity, internal family intrigue, class struggles and a happy little coup d'etat all span the course of four hours. Oh, and there is also a massive symbolic rainstorm that occurs somewhere in the middle. The Royal Shakespeare Company, coming on the fringes of its successful previous season in which it performed all 36 of Shakespeare's plays tackled the tragedy at UCLA's Royce Hall, lead by Sir Ian McKellen in the title role. This production imagined the kingdom of Shakespeare's imagination as something akin to ends of czarist Russian without all pesky the Marxist pretext. A country lead by a weak central figure that cannot see the evidence of a crumbling structures as it falls apart before him. Too bad there aren't any Bolsheviks around to sweeten the deal. The story remains the same: Lear, an old king looking to find a happy retirement in the warmth of his children's home decides to divide the kingdom among his three daughters, dependent on the contingency that they prove how much they love him. Two, presumably evil daughter cow-tow to this ridiculous display when the third (youngest and favorite) refuses. The consequences of this display filter down through the characters including Lear himself which ultimately lead to murder, torture, infidelity, and insanity. Aside from a truncated script, done for the sake of the aging McKellen, the play itself inserted one very interesting addition that influenced the overall tone. Instead of scripting the fool's murder as written--off stage and only mentioned in passing--his hanging is done in full view of the audience, all horror and fear, and his body is left swaying in the gnus during the intermission so as people are chatting about the first half and snacking on a danish, you look up to find the looming specter of the previous hours events almost taunting you from the stage. While one would think such a staging would characterize the entire production, it mostly helps to reiterate the fact that the real tragedies and foolishness of all these characters are almost less important than the killing of the fool. Despite the mastery and presence of this new addition, Cordelia, to dutiful daughters whose love is actually worthy and whose sacrifices should have remained central, was reduced to a bit of an idiot. Her pleas for justice in the opening scene do not nearly carry the weight or urgency that they should and her reasons for not participating are seen as weak at best. In short, we have no reason why poor Romola Garai should feel so jilted because to this audience, she was simply too stupid to play along. McKellen is indeed a presence on stage, dynamic enough even for the cheap seats. But to me, the real tragedies of King Lear has always been the simultaneous interplay of the House of Gloucester that mirrors that of the royal house of Lear. The Duke of Gloucester also finds himself the victim of his children's duplicity--a victimization that is arguable no less caused by his own actions--and its again redeemed. One cannot help but pity Gloucester. The poor bastard is blinded by the King's son in law by having his eyes ripped out by a mob. The loss of such "vile jelly" is horrifying to watch. But my real attraction with the Gloucester family has everything to do with the interplay between the Duke's sons, Edward and Edward. If Lear's daughters falsify love to gain power, Gloucester's sons feign loyalty and allegiance for their own survival and their demise. Edmund, the older bastard sun of the Duke is continually ridiculed for his mothers indiscretions, making him a few months "short a brother" and seeing the new turmoil fraught by the King's abdication, uses the upheaval to his advantage and seeks to ruin his legitimate brother Edward. Edmund is evil. Straight up without a chaser and is given one of the greatest speeches in the history of theatre: "Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy law My services are bound. Wherefore should I Stand in the plague of custom, and permit The curiosity of nations to deprive me, For that I am some twelve or fourteen moon-shines Lag of a brother? Why bastard? wherefore base? When my dimensions are as well compact, My mind as generous, and my shape as true, As honest madam's issue? Why brand they us With base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base? Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take More composition and fierce quality Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed, Go to the creating a whole tribe of fops, Got 'tween asleep and wake? Well, then, Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land: Our father's love is to the bastard Edmund As to the legitimate: fine word,--legitimate! Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed, And my invention thrive, Edmund the base Shall top the legitimate. I grow; I prosper: Now, gods, stand up for bastards!" Who doesn't love this?!?! The actor of this production was good. I warrant, he was a lot suaver and calculating than others I've seen, playing the role as a seducer of men (and women) then but I like my Edmund's dastardly to the point of being cartoon-y. Dressed in black and possibly twirling a mustache. He on the other hand had the good sense not to be so hammy. Edgar on the other hand, has the far more difficult job of first being a bit of a bookish twit, losing his sanity after being chased out of the kingdom, then finding valiant redemption all the while not knowing why any of the circumstances his brother created to ruin him were occurring in the first place. If Edmund wasn't evil enough for me, than Edgar was far too much the hero by plays end. In the end though, I was able to hear my favorite speech and revel in my nerdy Shakespeare love for an entire evening. Regardless of nit-picky issues. I was a wonderful night. Posted by Katie the so-called midget at 8:23 PM 0 comments December 2007 October 2007 Home Subscribe to: Posts (Atom) Who's driving this thing?!?! . Royal Shakespeare Company Sir Ian McKellen (Lear) Sylvester McCoy (le Fou) MES : Trevor Nunn 2007

17 Kellen takes a quieter, eventually wiser King Lear on tour
IN THE mid-1990s, when Sir Ian McKellen, a British classical actor, was working on his film career, he said he would never take on the iconic role of King Lear. He said portraying Lear, who goes from divine monarch to shivering naked animal in three acts, was too difficult and too exhausting. Instead, he spent ten years tiptoeing around the role in Hollywood. He played a deranged despot, Magneto, in the “X-Men” trilogy, and donned the long beard and staff as Gandalf in “Lord of the Rings”: Lear's fairy-tale doppelganger, wise, benevolent, always in control. EPO The king (left) and blinded Gloucester: poor, infirm, weak and despised Now 68, and having secured the global stardom he desired, Sir Ian is finally playing Lear with the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford and is soon to take the play on a world tour. He had changed his mind, he said, because of the urgency of his own ageing (“I'm two years from collapsing into old age”) and because King Lear was an appropriate swan song, as “I probably won't be playing a great part in Shakespeare again.” Sir Ian has been involved in the production since its inception two years ago, setting the tour's itinerary and bringing in the director, Sir Trevor Nunn, with whom he first worked in Stratford in 1960 when the two were students at Cambridge. Given the weight of expectation, audiences will be surprised by the actor's performance. He does not howl under angry skies; he whispers. His performance is so soft and understated that it sometimes feels more like Prospero than Lear. “The image of the old man out in the storm shouting insanely at the weather...encourages [me] to rather display the part; to be epic. But I am fighting that. Each performance I am coming down in decibels,” he says. The actor's understatement fits the director's vision of the play. Sir Trevor's briskly paced production, set in a Ruritania redolent of tsarist Russia, emphasises the need for humility in an empty and often unstable universe. Lear's madness stems from the disintegration of his divinely controlled, harmoniously ordered kingdom, in which he hubristically conceived himself to be supreme. In the opening, when Lear calls on Apollo, his subjects prostrate themselves before him. The production ends in supplication, with Lear leading those same characters on their knees, arms raised pleadingly to the silent skies. Taking “King Lear” on a world tour is timely as the developed world watches its population age. But this Lear is no Alzheimer's patient. “He has a breakdown; he does not go permanently mad,” Sir Ian insists. As he and his director see it, Lear recovers his wits in the final act, coming to a deeper understanding of existence. The production is laden with auricular effects which form a noisy background to the ocular clarity that Lear reaches before his death. Sir Ian utters Lear's final words as if seeing for the first time: “Look there. Look there.” This is the biggest surprise of the production: making Lear's fate redemptive not despairing. “King Lear” is in Britain until July 7th. It goes to: Singapore, July 19th-22nd; Australia, July 28th-August 5th; New Zealand, August 11th-26th; and the United States, September 6th-October 28th. The full interview with Ian McKellen can be found here Back to top ^^ Le Lear de Sir Mc Kellen (né en 1939) et Gloucester aveugle (William Gaunt)

18 Vidéos pour aller plus loin
LEAR de Fréchuret : bande annonce LEAR de Sivadier Théâtre des Amandiers Le lEAR d’ Anna Mele en turkmène PWT - Shakespeare : un résumé de la tragédie du Roi Lear En passant par le module Recherche du site Vous trouverez d’autres documents Voir également sur le Site ArchitheA Ecole spectateur : Roi Lear autour de la version de Laurent Fréchuret : Vous trouverez au lien suivant un recueil de textes sur le Roi Lear. Il regroupe des notes d'intentions, interview et diverses critiques qui permettront de mieux savourer la mémoire de la version de Laurent Fréchuret André Engel : « Le public n’est jamais renvoyé à ses propres insuffisances mais toujours aux insuffisances de la scène, c’est cela qui l’autorise à juger ». Le Roi Lear : Les réécritures du texte de Shakespeare ou les infortunes de la vertu... Roi Lear : Sivadier et son trapèze rallument la querelle du metteur en scène tyran : « big Brother de la coulisse » ? Traduire Shakespeare suppose-t-il qu’on ait des vues sur le sexe des canards sauvages ? Une réflexion d’André Gide. King's Lear synopsis Le Roi Lear : aventures diverses du texte de Shakespeare et de ses représentations.

19 Sitographie indicative :
thttp:// des photographies de la version Sivadier de Jacky Ley et Agathe Poupeney] Ceci est un essai qui ne demande qu’à être « transformé », toute suggestion, compléments d’informations, sont les bienvenus… Contact :