There are scenes in this Second Age production in which Alan Stanford's Lear rages, raves or suffers against the indignities of his lot, while his companions onstage stand still as pillars; apt foils to the desolate monarch.
There are memorable scenes, too, where those vulnerable souls who find themselves cast into the night - the King himself, his faithful fool (John Olohan), the exiled Kent (Frank O'Sullivan) and the unloved Edgar (Rory Nolan) - cling to one another in a huddle of bewilderment, unable to speak in face of the ferocity of the storm. But in scenes where the King must genuinely interact with those around him - of which there are many in a play rooted as much in political corruption as it is in personal collapse - or where Stanford's large cast must strive to make an impact as characters with their own inner lives, this Lear reveals itself as stunted and even as shallow.
Though his performance is marred by a combination of feeble acoustics and - puzzling in so experienced a stage actor - generally muffled enunciation, Stanford delivers sufficient moments of power to indicate that he could be, in the hands of a director other than himself, a very fine Lear. From the lines spoken by his own character, he lures interesting nuances, instances of irony and compassion; he studies his fool intensely, making clear just how desperate Lear was for the counsel of another, and he treats his youngest daughter, from the start, with coldness, suggesting that he had long been a much less loving father than he would have us believe.
But the dynamic between the King and most of the characters around him is so poor, with a number of actors turning in what can only, in honesty, be described as performances of solid wood, that Stanford would appear not to have saved any energy for the task of directing the several other roles essential to a powerful realisation of this play. Certainly, there are exceptions, yet they tend to be from the actors experienced enough to rise above this difficulty - Kieran Ahern (Gloucester), Gerry O'Brien (Albany) and Alan Smyth, whose Edmund, smooth and confident, almost carries the show. But around them is a kingdom of disarray. For the secondary school students who will comprise much of the audience for this production, this may suffice to put flesh on the bones of the text, but it, and they, deserve much more. To come away unmoved from what is perhaps Shakespeare's most affecting tragedy is a sorry experience.
