So, because I did two character studies for my first two performance reviews, I decided to branch out and do something different for the third. That one being posted, I wanted to point out a few things I thought about Kate Fleetwood’s Goneril.
- A really, really great performance
- Interestingly, in the interview in the program, SRB says (paraphrasing here) once Lear rejects Goneril and she rejects him, she is on the path to suicide. I hadn’t really thought about her arc in the text, but that’s just all kinds of interesting, to make that statement.
- That hair and wardrobe
- Apparently, Mary Cattermole has daddy issues that her new husband doesn’t know about
I generally like Goneril anyway, but I definitely had more sympathy for her than I did for, say, Regan or Cordelia. One choice that I didn’t agree with, however, was the decision to have Albany choke her in the 4.2 fight. I felt like that was inconsistent with his pacifist, slightly wimpy character, especially because Goneril calls him out for being “milk-livered”. Still, I thought Albany was well played as well. (He can get a little too bland and ineffective in some productions. In this one, though, I felt like I could respect him but also understand why his relationship with Goneril had broken down, and even comprehend some of his blindness and the bad decisions he makes.)
I think my main problem with Lear (I’ve expressed this to several people before) was not that any of the individual performances were bad (though I do think Cordelia was a little weak), but that the sum of the parts added up to less than the whole. I just felt “whelmed” about the play, and so, ironically, my favorite play of the lot that we’ve seen (barring an amazing Much Ado tomorrow) is Titus, even though I couldn’t even watch the entire play.