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| David Montee, AEA, as King Lear at Interlochen Center for the Arts 2017. Photo courtesy Interlochen Center for the Arts |
A Review of King Lear at Interlochen Center for the Arts—July 8, 2017
by Richard Joyrich
I had the distinct pleasure of seeing a wonderful production
of King Lear Saturday night along with Linda Theil at Interlochen Center of the Arts in northwest Michigan.
Interlochen has held an annual Shakespeare Festival for 10
years now and I am been privileged to have been able to see at least two
productions there in the past, Twelfth
Night in 2008 and The Taming of the
Shrew in 2009. Both of these were excellent performances, but the production
of King Lear this year far exceeded
them.
Of course, the main reason that I enjoyed the production so
much is the extraordinary talent of David Montee in the title role. I have seen
King Lear at many other venues,
including productions at the Stratford Festival in Stratford, Ontario with
William Hutt and Colm Feore as Lear and Montee’s performance was even more
enjoyable to me in many ways.
Montee knows how to inject just the right amount of humor
into the role during the scenes when Lear descends into madness, while
retaining the pathos and dignity of the character at all times. I was thus
particularly glad to see that the director of the play, William Church, chose
to leave in much of Act 4, scene 6 intact (the only scene where Lear and
Gloucester have any kind of meaningful dialog together) combining the mad Lear
who is only now beginning to understand humanity and the blind Gloucester who
now finds that he is beginning to “see clearly” how the world really works. It
is a wonderful and pivotal scene (but frequently cut short in many productions
of the play) and David Montee as Lear and Jeffrey Nauman as Gloucester carry it
off beautifully.
David Montee is also able to project the controlled rage of
Lear when he is thwarted again and again and knows just when to allow his voice
to come out in a roar. In short, Montee’s performance is perfectly nuanced and
appropriate to all situations Lear is exposed to in the play.
Linda and I were able to meet David for coffee the next day
and we discussed (among other things) his portrayal of Lear. He confided that
he had based his performance on that of Peter Ustinov in a memorable production
in 1980 at the Stratford Festival in Ontario. Ustinov and his understudy
Maurice Good published a rehearsal journal of this production in 1982, titled Every Inch a Lear (based of course on
Lear’s famous line in Act 4, scene 6, “Aye, every inch a king”). Appropriately,
I have also used this title for my blog entry.
Other actors in the cast had very notable performances as
well. I single out Skylar Okerstrom-Lang as a very energetic and realistic
Edgar, particularly in his assumed role of Poor Tom and the way he plays off
the other characters he encounters.
I also enjoyed the performance of Jeremy Gill as the Fool.
He and David Montee had wonderful scenes together and I very much like the way
he just walked off stage, whistling, in the opposite direction of everyone else
as some kind of explanation (I suppose from the director) of the Fool’s sudden
and unexplained disappearance in the middle of the play after giving the
enigmatic line, “And I’ll go to bed at noon”.
This production of Lear
(as in the case of the last five years of the Interlochen Shakespeare Festival)
took place in the beautiful outdoor Upton-Morley Pavilion. Performing outdoors
of course always carries the risks of inclement weather and extraneous noise,
but in the idyllic Camelot-like setting of Interlochen this is not at all a
problem. David told us that, in the five years of performing outdoors
in this pavilion there was only ever one instance of rain, and that was only a
sort of light drizzle.
An outdoor setting for this current performance was ideal
and really allowed the audience to “enter the world of the play.” Okerstrom-Lang,
as Edgar, took every opportunity to enhance his portrayal of Edgar as Poor Tom
by rubbing real dirt from the edges of the pavilion onto his body and picking
up sharp looking rocks and twigs to mutilate himself (thankfully this last
was only play-acting) and many other actors took advantage of the setting to
effect dramatic entrances and exits.
In addition, there is nothing like being outdoors to feel a
part of the famous storm scene. Through the amazing performances of the actors
on stage and appropriate use of lighting and sound effects, it was possible to
almost actually feel the [nonexistent] rain while watching the play.
In all, this was an incredible experience at Interlochen for
both Linda and myself and a wonderful way of celebrating David Montee’s
retirement after 21 years of being the Director of the Theatre Arts Division at
Interlochen Arts Academy.
But, Montee was quick to point out to us that he is
not finished with acting and will certainly be back for future productions at
the Interlochen Shakespeare Festival or other venues, “if they ask me."
I have no doubt at all, David, that they will.