Perhaps because Shakespeare knew that every father is a king in his kingdom until he ceases to be one, King Lear is the greatest tragedy among his tragedies.
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The adaptation directed by Angélica Rogel updates that ancient wound, confronts us with contemporary old age, with the shame of fathers in the lives of their children. At an age when children discover the imperfections of their parents: capricious, unjust, decimated by the storm. The giants of our childhood reveal, under our adult gaze, their feet of clay.
Every story has a right and a reverse. The one told by Goneril and Regan accentuates the eccentricities of the old man and his excesses. Another, even greater, shows us the human soul, fickle, subjected to the temporal vulnerabilities of the will.
The 19th century ended thinking that King Lear was unstageable, as the play required a great scenic deployment. Rogel’s version makes the theater its own kingdom, and don Luis de Tavira the splendid transmitter of a legacy.
His Lear believes he possesses a kingdom because he can point to it with his finger and divide it. Perhaps the drama of fatherhood, like that of power, consists in discovering that the world we believe is ours can never be divided among the children.
The inheritance map is represented in a diorama. The kingdom in a box, the fiction within fiction, contained in an austere stage machinery. And in its somber atmosphere, the mirror of our time: a great theater of fools.
Harold Bloom wrote that Shakespeare is a mirror within a mirror. And that is why the Lear of each of us says more about us than about Lear himself.
Of the two plots woven in King Lear – that of the old man and his daughters, and that of Gloucester with his children – Cordelia’s especially captivates. Since the late 19th century, the possibility has been suggested that the roles of Cordelia and the Fool be played by the same person, and in this adaptation both characters are portrayed by Diana Sedano (nominated this year for the Ariel Award for Best Actress for Juana, Daniel Giménez Cacho’s debut film). Cordelia is the trigger of the story, but the Fool is the character with the greatest trajectory development. He is mask, craft, and sweat. He has a vital time that transforms whoever represents him.
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Lear’s Fool is bitter. And this one that Diana builds is very Mexican: he recalls the great actors of the tent shows, Palillo, Clavillazo, Tin-Tan; his voice reminds us of the speech of pachucos, cholos and chundos, chichifos and malafachas.
What is foolishness in a wise man is light in a fool. The Fool teaches us that in the court the truth is not found in the royal counselors, but in the prophecy of the gentle madmen. He is grandiloquent, perhaps because he embodies Lear’s conscience before going mad. In Cordelia, however, there are no grand words. There is love in silence. Only Shakespeare can move us in that way through the centuries.
I met Diana Sedano in 2015. Martín Acosta was presenting Two people briefly touch, a piece about migrants in the kingdom of Las Patronas, by the train tracks, down in my Veracruz south. I saw her later in Sonnet for two souls in suspense by Martín Zapata. Her inherited kingdom is also the theater, where she grew up with her mother. A daughter of the theater plays the daughter of a king who is also the king of the theater.
Is there madness in the old monarch? Or a wisdom that will only come after madness? Lear divides the kingdom to free his old age from tasks and care, but intends to keep the attributes of his majesty. “Nothing will come from nothing,” he repeats as if anticipating the emptiness to which he will be led. Against his own design, Lear teaches us not to confuse fatherhood and kingdom. Before the light, there will be darkness, storm. Before justice, the human will rise in iniquity.
This September 3 begins the final season of King Lear at the Helénico Theater in Mexico City, with an unbeatable cast: Luis de Tavira, Diana Sedano, Mariana Gajá, Mayra Batalla, Mauricio García Lozano, Erika de la Llave, Rodrigo Virago, Roberto Pichardo, and Raúl Villegas. It will remain on the bill from Thursday to Sunday, until October 4.
We return to Shakespeare because he remains necessary. Go with the best possible company. Upon leaving, peek into the Gothic Chapel: you will find it magical, illuminated at night. Avoid the gloss; nothing will be superior to the atmosphere of the previous hours.
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