19/08/23

The Space Triplex (Studio), Edinburgh

“Poor naked wretches… How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides […] defend you from seasons such as these?”

King Lear is probably my favourite Shakespeare play; Lear Alone is a distillation of the titular character’s descent into madness and destitution. This Lear isn’t just isolated from his friends and family, he’s isolated from the rest of the story too, and – with the spotlight turned on him – we see with brutal clarity exactly what is happening. Old age is upon him. The signs of dementia are stark: his judgement is poor; he is capricious and sometimes violent; he’s confused; he struggles to remember things – and he goes off, wandering. 

Created in partnership with Crisis UK, this project began life as a web series, focusing on older people’s homelessness. It’s an inspired notion. Using just Lear’s words from the first Folio, Edmund Dehn plays Lear as a shambling elderly man, ignoring his frantic daughter’s answerphone messages, traipsing the streets and talking to the air. He is Shakespeare’s king from 800 BC, but he is also an ordinary man of the 21st century. The words he speaks belong to his character, but they could just as well be memories, lines from his schooldays, recalled because of their present aptness.

He both is and is not Lear.

Dehn cuts a tragic figure, and it’s easy to empathise with him – as well as with his offstage daughter, who keeps trying to contact him. As he rails against the world, the sadness of his situation becomes ever more apparent. The symbolism is bold and simple and very effective: from the Lidl bag he carries everywhere to the blanket he clutches to him, Lear is desperately clinging to what little he has left, holding on to the familiar in the hope of warding off his demons.

Directed by Anthony Shrubsall, Lear Alone is a thought-provoking piece of theatre – a big performance on a tiny stage.

4.1 stars

Susan Singfield