But not for long. The first ever National Theatre Live worldwide screening of a Donmar production came to a halt between great Jacobi's mad musings on archery and toasted cheese; later, pedalling back from Notting Hill against a furious wind, I guessed the reason for the blip. The weather had scuppered Lear's fate, off stage as well as on.
Sitting in a packed Gate cinema, we heard a voice apologise to a presumably mortified Donmar audience (thinking about it, we guessed the actors must have been primed to expect technical glitches, and had given their consent to any potential interruptions). Minutes passed, then up came the scrubbed stage accompanied by the roar of Adam Cork's superb sound design, and back we went to the very beginning of Shakespeare's Act Four, Scene Six: re-enter Gloucester and Edgar "dressed like a peasant".
It upped their game, certainly, and the cameramen's: this most tense of scenes between Paul Jesson's father and Gwilym Lee's son seemed to have a new emotional charge. I've seen it before when a violinist or a cellist breaks a string, stops and takes up the fight with renewed focus.
As for Jacobi's peerless Lear, it would be hard to imagine him pulling out more stops than he already does in the extraordinary mix of the operatic and the intimate that constitutes the acting world's greatest vocal range, though surely as the production comes to the end of its London run, the exemplary clarity of Michael Grandage's always-comprehensible staging has left the actors free to add details and to play with their lines.
There are only two snags about this extraordinary medium for bringing a small-scale theatre production to life for thousands: one, the obvious, that there's no substitute for being there; the other, that you can't get out of your seat quick enough before Emma Freud chirps in advertising future productions. Muttering "blah, blah, blah, not listening", we bolted for the exit. Anyway, don't miss the greatest Lear of modern times if you have a chance to see it on tour, and roll on the hopefully predictable awards: more crowns for Jacobi as best actor, not to mention more garlands for Tracie Bennett in a comparable piece of soul-baring, albeit in a, shall we say, lesser play.
- Details of the Donmar's eight-week tour of King Lear on the company's website
- Next National Theatre Live screenings
- What's on at the Notting Hill Gate Cinema
- Read theartsdesk's debate on televised/livescreen theatre
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