King Lear, Young Vic

It’s no secret that Rupert Goold’s King Lear is a curate’s egg. It’s good in parts – Pete Postlethwaite is beautiful as an ex-king, albeit less effective while still in situ. There’s something terribly tender about the production’s final tableau, as Pete sits there with ashen Cordelia in his lap, his small voice ever reducing, his kingship, manhood and paternity destroyed. So this is what’s left when everything that shores up selfhood, everything that obscures our impotence and pointlessness, all that separates us from the beasts, is brutally removed.

But there’s some rubbish in here too – and (although I wish it weren’t so) the rubbish often makes the stronger impression. The scene in which Cornwall and Regan blind Gloucester is the most ridiculous of the year. It’s not the only moment in Goold’s Lear that is psychologically unconvincing. But it’s the most preposterous, as Lear’s daughter and her hubbie flit instantly from believable human beings to shlock Gothic sex fiends. Cornwall gouges out Gloucester’s left eye. Regan snogs him, wallowing in the gore. She bites out the old man’s other peeper. Blood spews everywhere. The couple get frisky again. Savagery is a turn-on, see? And Regan and Cornwall are, like, baddies. Thus are two of the plays intriguing characters shrunk to cartoon grotesquery.

Have you ever tried biting out someone’s eye? I suspect it’s more difficult than it’s made to seem here. I may be wrong.

I pitied Poor Tom. Why is he pretending to be an idiot, in the middle of a wood? Goold’s production doesn’t make it clear. How shallow must Lear’s love for Cordelia have been, to be so hastily disposed of? Why do the fathers misjudge their children so spectacularly? Has Gloucester never had an inkling Edmund might be a bad ’un? As Maly Theatre director Lev Dodin flatly asked, when I interviewed him a few years back: “how has Gloucester managed to be basically Lear’s prime minister for so many years, living in court, and yet not be able to decipher who is a liar and who is not?” There are no answers – nor suggestions of answers – here. There’s fine image-making, a forward thrust and performances with pizzazz. But Lear’s greatest mysteries aren’t unlocked.