Review: Lithgow’s “Lear” a Crowning Achievement

The wholly committed John Lithgow and a talented, risk-taking ensemble propel themselves through three hours of family strife and bloody betrayal in the disquieting King Lear that has just opened at Central Park’s Delacorte Theater. John Lee Beatty’s dark set sets the tone for the tragedy, which hasn’t been seen at Shakespeare in the Park since 1973. (Is the three-hour-plus King Lear the gentlest summertime fare? Can I ask you again at 11:30 p.m. when you’re waiting for a C train home?) The familiar characters come and go through a half-dozen doors evenly spaced underneath a daunting wall of mesh, with dozens of short spears tucked into it at random intervals. It’s a severe and unusual backdrop. Unlike past SITP productions, which have capitalized on The Delacorte’s natural setting, this one—unfolding under the as-swiftly-paced-as-Lear-can-be direction of SITP vet Daniel Sullivan (last season’s The Comedy of Errors, etc.)—removes any sense that you’re even in Central Park. You might wonder what it would be like if the play’s famous storm on a heath could transpire among trees.
It’s difficult not to have a soft spot for Lithgow’s tragic monarch, here a reasonable fellow blinded, just momentarily, by the insincere flattery of his two oldest daughters, Goneril and Regan (movie star Annette Bening, in her SITP debut, and lauded stage and TV actress Jessica Hecht).