REVIEW: Lear (Pitlochry Festival Theatre)

Lear - ★★★★☆ - Haunting

Pitlochry Festival Theatre
9 July – 1 August
Review by Rebecca Mahar
 
Pitlochry Festival Theatre takes on one of Shakespeare’s most towering tragedies for the first time this summer in Finn den Hertog’s adaptation of Lear, featuring Maureen Beattie in the title role. In this Lear of queen and quandaries, den Hertog’s conceptual goals are somewhat subsumed by the play itself, but the production nevertheless delivers a worthy rendition of its storied source.

Maureen Beattie and the cast of Lear. Pic: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan.

 
Lear begins in the elderly monarch’s court, where she declares her intention to retire from the her office as Queen of Britain, and divide her realm among her three daughters. First, however, she asks each of them to profess how much they love her. The eldest and middle daughters, Goneril (Jenny Hulse) and Regan (Lindsey Campbell), make a great show of their professions, hoping for preferment; but the youngest and Lear’s favourite, Cordelia (Ailsa Davidson), states that she loves her mother as much and no more than is her bond, and that she must render some of her love to her future husband, rather than reserving all for her mother. Enraged, Lear disinherits Cordelia and dismisses her to marry her suitor the King of France (Dylan Read). All will be divided between Goneril and Regan instead, they shall furnish a hundred knights to be Lear’s retinue, and she shall live alternately between their houses while they rule jointly. Cordelia acquiesces and departs, but a simple resolution of this family drama is not to be.
 
Beattie as Lear presents a still-vibrant monarch ready to quit her decaying palace and enjoy a retirement of revels, unaware of any of the scheming taking place around her— or, apparently, of her courtiers’ speculations on her mental state. The flashpoint of Cordelia begins her decline, and Beattie plays it with a confusion of understanding that is both beautiful and wrenching, evoking the long goodbye of dementia, rather than perhaps a more traditional Lear descent into raving madness. This approach to Lear is not an attempt to justify her treatment of Cordelia, but a demonstration that two things can be true: Lear can be jealous of her daughter’s love, angry and hurt by this perceived rejection, and also experiencing the cognitive decline that all too often comes with aging. Beattie balances this dichotomy with consummate skill.

The cast of Lear. Pic: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan.

Emma Bailey’s set design mirrors Lear’s state: clearly a once-grand location, the room which begins as Lear’s court and transforms to embody the rest of the play’s locations has degraded, beginning to succumb to the ravages of time. Cracked tiles, electrical points bereft of fittings, scuffed paint, and dustcloths litter the scene, even as the courtiers roam about swigging champagne. While the decay goes unacknowledged by the characters, it nevertheless serves its insidious purpose.
 
Similarly sinister is Campbell as Regan, with wide eyes and fixed grin to accompany her sinuous movement, the barest façade of daughterly devotion skinning over her ruthless ambition and contempt. Campbell treads just on the right side of the line between villainy and caricature. Movement, directed by Vicki Manderson is a hallmark of this production, with exceptionally distinct performances throughout. Another standout in this area is Dylan Read, transforming from the lackadaisical Edgar, son of the Earl of Gloucester (Forbes Masson), into his alter ego, Poor Tom. Read exhibits a Doug Jones-like uncanniness and specificity, with a monstrousness identifiable through its humanity.

Dylan Read as Edgar. Pic: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan.

Lear is packed with brilliant performances, including Masson as a devastatingly sympathetic Gloucester and Mercy Ojelade as the loyal, long-suffering Kent, and moments of creative exceptionalism, such as Lear in the storm and the putting out of Gloucester’s eyes (plaudits are certainly due to fight director Robin Hellier). The production is not, however, without flaws: the constant stream of haze is unnecessary and obfuscating, robbing moments such as Edgar’s transformation into Poor Tom on the heath, when it makes a real difference, of their maximum impact. There are lengthy periods of pulsating light which are distracting, a detriment to Kai Fischer’s otherwise well-executed design. The unevenness of time with which it takes certain characters to die having been stabbed in the belly versus the throat with a pocketknife.
 
These small considerations do add up over the course of the play, but its major weakness arrives not from the performance in and of itself, but what it claims to do against what it actually does. In his notes to the play, den Hertog asserts that “by the seemingly simple act of turning Lear into a woman and into a mother, we find beneath its epic surface lies something much more familiar: a story about a family. Our Lear is a mother and a monarch. Her family are not simply battling over a divided kingdom, but over the love, affection, and attention of a parent. Her madness is the disintegrating mind of an aging woman. Her loyal courtiers become concerned friends. Her daughters, each with their own human flaws, can be seen as somewhat justified in (some of) their actions.”

Maureen Beattie as Lear and Forbes Masson as Gloucester. Pic: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan.

All of these claims about what lies beneath the surface of the play are insightful and true. However, they are all also there to be found in Shakespeare’s text, where Lear is king, not queen. None of them emerges solely from the act of turning Lear from a father to a mother, and indeed, if one searches for a motive behind Goneril and Regan’s plots, it is easier to find in a version of the story where they may expect to receive little or nothing as female descendants to a male king, where their patriarchal circumstances favour their husbands in the dividing of Lear’s kingdom.
 
So, if the transformation of Lear from king to queen does not bring these aspects of the story into being, what does it do? Den Hertog’s adaptation as a whole transfers more power into the female sphere: Queen Lear, Regan and Goneril as heirs and their husbands with little role to play, Kent a woman of authority and influence. These wholesale changes do create a point of view on the story: in excising the patriarchy as a villain, den Hertog’s version allows more room for the interpersonal conflicts to breathe, and for a magnification of Lear’s decline to take centre stage. Unlike some gender-swapped Shakespeares, this Lear does not attempt to degrade its newly-female monarch for her femaleness or make a point of emphasising it, simply allowing her to exist, and the character to be seen through this embodiment.

Maureen Beattie as Lear. Pic: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan.

For this play, this is the real hallmark of gender-conscious casting, not the bold, misguided claims of uncovering heretofore hidden truths: the recognition that many characters and stories which have traditionally been performed as men, by men, can be performed and told by other genders, and that gender-expansive iterations of classics do not have to have a revolutionary message. They may simply be, bringing new perspectives with them inherently, quietly and insistently demonstrating that they deserve a place. 
 
Running Time: Three hours with one interval
Venue: Pitlochry Festival Theatre (Main House), Port-na-Craig, Pitlochry PH16 5DR
9 July – 1 August 2026
Tickets: https://www.pitlochryfestivaltheatre.com/whats-on/lear/
Access performances: Audio Described (23 July 7:30pm, 30 July 2pm); BSL Interpreted (24 July 7:30pm); Captioned (30 July 1pm); Relaxed and Dementia Friendly (26 July 2pm)

The cast of Lear. Pic: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan.