The Abbey hasn’t had a production of King Lear in your granny’s lifetime. It is dense, difficult, hard to stage, and arguably Shakespeare’s best. But in spite of the terror of having to ‘meet the play’, Selina Cartmell has done it. Here she talks about grief, the play’s animal energies and the scene that started it all.
After 80 years since the last Abbey production, why do King Lear now?
I think it’s a play that resonates with everyone at any time because of these themes of dysfunctional families, land, loss, grief; it’s all in there. It feels to me also like a world
that is very much on the precipice of a massive fall and it happens with Lear. It’s a great play for change, and there’s something about where we’re at now that echoes
that in many ways. People are up for these massive changes, I don’t where they’re going to take place or how. So it feels like that kind of apocalyptic play, where massive shifts are going to take place.
Playing King Lear is always seen as a rite of passage or as the high point in an actor’s career. What is Owen Roe going to bring to his Lear?
When Fiach and I were talking about putting it on, we were talking about who would play ‘the King.’ It’s a play you wouldn’t do unless you had an actor you were really
inspired by, and Owen inspired me. For me he has that humanity and he’s fearless in that exploration of a man going on that journey of mental collapse, he goes from king to father and somehow Owen captures that for me. I adore working with him. I think he’s inspired and there’s a lot of personal stuff he’s bringing to it which will help bring that depth. It’s a huge pressure for any actor to play King Lear. And it has been
a really rollercoaster and I think it demands a lot from every actor in the rehearsal room.
The scene on the heath is often seen as the director’s opportunity to make the play ‘theirs’ and communicate their interpretation to the audience. What is your heath in this production?
I started from the images of storm and tempest in that speech. I didn’t really focus on placing that on stage – it’s going on inside his skull. It really is about what it is to be human, these questions, this searching. It’s a scene that asks questions of us all. And there is this chaos, the storm, an arbitrariness to this world. And it’s something we all experience in our midst. It really is a beast. The thing that has struck me most working on it, is how much grief and loss there is in the play. How much pain there is in this world and what kind of a place Shakespeare must’ve been in when he wrote
this. There’s amazing poetry. A lot of people feel the pressure of having to ‘meet the play’ because of it.
Directing King Lear seems to be an achievement most directors approach in the ‘sunset years’ of their career, so it’s unusual that you’re directing it when you’re quite young. How does that feel?
Terrifying. You always think you need to be 60 or 70 and with a white beard yourself in order to be directing it. But you can do this play three or four times in your life if you’re lucky. So I see this as my first try, and hopefully I’ll have more goes at it and will be able to explore the full depth of it and hopefully we’ll get some of it into this play.
Have you entered into an obsession with any of the scenes while working on it?
I think one of the reasons I wanted to do this play was the final scene with the howls of Lear when he brings in the dead Cordelia. I think that will haunt me for the rest of my life. It’s the most moving scene of the play, and it’s here that you finally understand his journey. But it still remains one of the most puzzling scenes in theatre.
This production launches The Abbey’s Shakespeare Season which will see a series of events taking place from February to March. Tickets.
