That fine actor Pete Postlethwaite has taken a right old kicking, along with the rest of the production and director Rupert Goold, for his impersonation of Shakespeare’s King Lear at Liverpool’s Everyman Theatre.
The production has been savaged by the critics who hate its attempt to bolt on contemporary political references to the ferocious old tale. These are now to be “jettisoned” says Postlethwaite, allowing the play itself (which needs no help from anyone) to come to the fore.
It’s good, and unusual, to hear an actor saying he and they got it wrong, but one expects no less from Postlethwaite who made his name on TV and in films playing baddies initially (his Obadiah Hakeswill in the early episodes of Sean Bean’s epic series Sharpe, based on the Bernard Cornwell books, was fantastic).
He will no doubt go on to make a very good Lear (the production comes to London’s Young Vic in the new year).
Among the bits jettisoned from the production is the disastrous opening which was the supposed St Francis of Assisi quote, “where there is discord may we bring harmony” spouted by Mrs Thatcher on the steps of Number 10 when she won the 1979 general election.
This before she promptly went on to sow more disharmony (Miner’s Strike and so on) than any other UK politician of the last century.
King Lear as Margaret Thatcher (or vice versa) is just too obvious a way of telling the audience what the production is supposed to be about.
Anyway, unlike Lear, she sort of won.