Madness, Fine and Otherwise

King Lear Weeping over the Death of Cordelia by James Barry

For the five years that we've been spending time San Diego, I've been meaning to catch a play at the marvelous Old Globe Theater in Balboa Park.  Thanks to the generosity and kindness of local friends Bobbi (a Globe docent who offered free tickets) and Jo (event planner and coordinator extraordinaire), I got to see two productions of the 2010 Shakespeare Festival in one week.

Both The Madness of King George III and King Lear were presented by the Old Globe Summer Repertory group, staged at the unique outdoor Lowell Davies Festival Theatre adjacent to the Globe, and directed by Adrian Noble.  The Lowell is modeled on the outdoor theaters common to Elizabethan England, but with much better, modern stadium seating.  The plays were not exactly lightweight fare in either case--quite painful in both, to be candid, which is a tribute to the power of the productions.  Simple but highly functional staging, creative costuming...I could go on and on about how wonderfully these plays were presented, but there were some unique aspects to the experience that made them even more memorable.

For a visitor to San Diego, and I am still a visitor despite part-time residence for the last three years, there were exotica to be savored that couldn't have been directed nor produced by the Old Globe's company. For example, take the temperature.  Both attendance dates, a Thursday and the following Sunday, were warm Southern California days; typically, in late June, a low overcast and some lower temperatures are common, but the two days in question were warm and warmer.  In fact, it was hot in the sun and, on the second day, I was wearing shorts during the day.

So I was blown away when one of my friends said to dress warmly and she would bring blankets to cover us.  The other said she wears long johns under her slacks, furry boots, gloves, and a heavy jacket to performances at the outdoor Festival Theatre!  In June. I felt like an idiot digging out my few winter items to attend a stage play at a fine venue, but I was so glad I did.  By about fifteen minutes into The Madness of King George, I was covered neck to ankles in the heaviest blanket I've ever seen (thanks, Jo!) and recalling that folks die of hypothermia in the deserts of the Southwest!  Looking around, I saw that almost everyone was similarly snuggled down.

Looking around, I also saw that the audience was very old!  Maybe that reflects the ticket cost.  Or, maybe, the more sophisticated level of culture and entertainment offered at the Globe.  Or, maybe, the aged audience is drawn to a Shakespearean tragedy about aging, dementia, and the losses inherent--it hardly gets grimmer than Lear ,unless it's the modern Madness--and to another performance that's about physical and mental suffering made worse by what passes for medical treatment.  Poor George III, a pretty decent human and a better monarch than most in England's history, suffers from porphyria which attacks his mental capacities and debilitates his body. (Or is it mercury poisoning?) Then, the physicians and quacks who treat and torture him according to  Aristotelian medical traditions, including blistering, bleeding, starving, and purging, nearly kill him while the younger generation and the political sharks wait to divide up the remains.  It's hard to watch, but I imagine that the elderly tolerate it better than the young.  Not sure why I think that. Would you think so?

So, there we are, this old audience (there were some young people, of course and many in middle-age, but primarily we were the young-old and middle-old...whatever all that means), bundled to our ears, freezing anyway, and watching marvelous actors portray the depths of human suffering, age-related humiliation, and general human sorrow.  There was fine wit on display, too, and beautiful language, but there were some scenes where those salves did not relieve the pain for the audience.  Now, don't that sound like a good time?

And, yet, it was; I was so thrilled to see such quality onstage.  And there was a comic relief peculiar to San Diego's Old Globe: the theater is adjacent to the San Diego Zoo and, at the oddest and best moments during those cold nights, the zoo's inhabitants offered special audio contributions.  So, come the lines,

"How fearful

And dizzy 'tis to cast one's eyes so low!
The crows and choughs that wing the midway air
Show scarce so gross as beetles; half way down
Hangs one that gathers samphire, dreadful trade!"

...and the exotic birds of the Zoo's Aviary squawk loudly right on cue!

King George struts across the stage at the peak of his power, showing off his knowledge of every appointment in his court and the family history of each courtier,

 ...and a lion's roar booms out and vibrates the cold night air.

One play is old and contains more quotable lines than the other, but they make a good pair to watch back to back.  Especially if you are old in America at this time, old on the planet at this time.  I will leave you with a quotation from each that is pertinent to the news this week.

This is the excellent foppery of the world, that,
when we are sick in fortune,--often the surfeit 
of our own behavior,--we make guilty of our 
disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars: as 
if we were villains by necessity. --Lear

And, from Madness, George III speaks,

Peace of mind! I have no peace of mind. I have had no peace of mind since we lost America. Forests, old as the world itself, plains, strange delicate flowers, immense solitudes. And all nature new to art. All ours. Mine. Gone. A paradise lost.