King Lear (Wu Hsing-Kuo)

EIF THEATRE
King Lear
Royal Lyceum Theatre
4 stars ****

THE TAIWANESE actor and director Wu Hsing-Kuo makes no secret of the fact that his solo version of King Lear – supported by a group of nine musicians, but otherwise performed entirely by himself – is an intensely personal project. First conceived eleven years ago, after a series of crises almost destroyed Wu’s Contemporary Legend company, this two-hour version of Shakespeare’s most mysterious tragedy uses the story of Lear – rejected in old age, and driven into madness and destitution – as a way of exploring profound feelings of rage and exclusion, and the endless quest for a true sense of self.

Despite the show’s decade-long history, there are times when Wu’s Lear still seems like a raw cry of rage, so absorbed in its own pain that it cannot quite make the case for presenting Lear as a solo show. What it offers, though, is a dazzling masterclass in the power of Wu’s Peking Opera tradition to evolve towards new stories and structures, as it aims for a future which, Wu argues, must combine tradition with modernity. And at its best, this is a show so ravishingly beautiful that it takes the breath away; not least in the elegiac final scene, set in a glowing red world of Buddhist prayer, where Lear – or Wu – returns as a spirit to sing the whole song of his exile from happiness, before the darkness finally claims him.

Joyce McMillan
Until 15 August
p. 17

ENDS ENDS

The Tempest (Mokwha Theatre)

EIF THEATRE
The Tempest
King’s Theatre
4 stars ****

THERE’S A LAZY ASSUMPTION, around the Edinburgh Festivals, that if you want fun, you go to see a Fringe show; whereas the official Festival is for serious stuff. If ever there was a show designed to knock that idea straight into a barrel of rice wine, though, it’s Mokwha Repertory Theatre of Korea’s lighthearted, laugh-a-minute version of Shakespeare’s Tempest, which reads as if Bottom and his mates from A Midsummer Night’s Dream had got hold of the story of Prospero and his daughter Miranda, exiled on their magic island, and given it a rompingly irreverent reinterpretation, in 90 minutes flat.

The show is certainly generous and spectacular in scale, with a cast of 22, four musicians, and some fine and explosive visual effects. Its tone, though, is down-to-earth, unpretentious, and often hilarious, with no-nonsense female actors well to the fore, as Soo-Mi Li’s Ariel morphs into an exasperated chubby housekeeper-figure, to Jin-Gak Chung’s gangling and absent-minded Prospero.

The most exciting aspect of the show, though, is adaptor and director Tae-Suk Oh’s brilliant merging of the material of The Tempest with a very similar story of an exiled king from early Korean history, first recorded in the 13th century. Both in the outline of the story, and in the earthy, nature-drenched detail of the language, Oh’s text seems to commune with Shakespeare at the deepest level of popular culture, where the art of survival in a bountiful natural environment joins hands with a rich tradition of play, laughter, magic, music, and prayer, often linked to the quest for good government. Shakespeare sends the goddess Ceres to bless the future union of Miranda and Ferdinand; here, the spirits sing an amazing litany of the earth’s creatures, from minnow to weasel. Shakespeare, though, would have been absolutely at home with the spirit of the song; and with the sense of fun that drenches this production, light yet earthy, and simple, yet as strong as the shared pulse of humanity itself.

Joyce McMillan
Until 15 August
p. 16

ENDS ENDS