Last night I saw Colin Friels in the lead role of The True History of the Life and Death of King Lear and his Three Daughters at the Belvoir Street Theatre, directed by Eamon Flack. I don’t know the play well enough to tell if they fiddled with the text, but apart from the regendering of one character that created eddies of confusion, it’s a brilliant production that spoke to me powerfully. An interesting side note is that Goneril is played by Friels’s daughter Charlotte Friels.
So here’s a little verse:
November verse 6: After seeing King Lear at the Belvoir
Once in Balmain I saw Colin
skip with Charlotte hand in hand
up Darling Street, past shopping, strolling
midday crowds. You'll understand:
that father and his preschool daughter
provoked our wistful semi-laughter.
Would like them we all could play
with all self-consciousness at bay!
Last night once more they were together,
she the firstborn, he King Lear.
She flattered him, then with a sneer
she drove him out. The aging father
cursed her. After all that rage
do they still skip once they're offstage?
Added later: After I’d written that and pressed ‘Publish’ I saw that I have mentioned Colin Friels a couple of times previously on this blog. In August 2005 I actually blogged about the incident that features in the poem. I discovered that my memory of the incident differs wildly from what I recorded at the time. I have retrieve that blog post. It’s at this link.
I have written this blog post on the land of Gadigal and Wangal of the Eora nation who, as far as I know, never had deadly battles over inheritance of land. I acknowledge Elders past and present of all those clans, and welcome any First Nations readers.
Me fail? I fly! 