Clown Lear – enigmatic, yet endearing

“Can’t you see, I am trying to cry” is how a theatre starts. It can actually since even before this, we find the character on stage – into some business, looking at the audience as if he fears them. The Brechtian reference of Epic theatre is clichéd but again it seldom fails as long as the mood is not only in the form but carried through in content as well, subsequently. The Company Theatre’s premiere Clown Lear (dir: Rajat Kapoor, actor: Atul Kumar) on the 17^th of December as part of the inaugural show of the 11^th Odeon has been successful in keeping the dynamics of theatre in place. We find a singular character on stage who is Chaplin-sque as par his looks – we immediately relate him to a clown. That’s what he says as well. He is a clown who is asked to play the fool in William Shakespeare’s epic King Lear. Who is Lear, by the way? Is he the clown or the fool in the play itself with whom Lear can probably change hearts? The next one and half hours or so the singlet unfolds himself, juxtaposes different roles, takes up the responsibilities of many and then leaving in nothingness.  Ironically, it waffles the nothingness of ‘our’ living as well.  This is the cradle where the Absurdist theatre of Samuel Beckett mingles so effortlessly. The jibes at the audience, the mocking of them at the face, the slants made are so typically self-referential. The audience is part of a performance, anyone can replace the clown on stage, and doesn’t everyone do so in their personal isolated existences? The inner explorations of a tumultuous mind, the intermingled layer of memory and experience gel with the outward angst of being deprived, of seeking justice.

            Even without the theoretical heaviness theatre wins when it ropes in the audience in its journey. An elite audience, of an urban metropolis, of a third-world country – an audience that is as sure as a humbug! The clown is the tramp – the defeated individual, that philosophical monk who slaps at the face of existentiality and tells us how his daughter, his “little one” actually threw him out of her home bought on his money and loans. How, he loved her daughter, gave her all that he can and now that his little one is no more, he doesn’t want to curse her for what she had done –

“Howl, howl, howl, howl! O, you are men of stones:
Had I your tongues and eyes, I'ld use them so
That heaven's vault should crack. She's gone for ever!”

Like the tempest suddenly Lear jumps out of the clown. Or as I said, isn’t Lear the clown himself?

            The entire play is strewn with inter-texts, the blurring of narrative where we can identify with Lear’s story, through references of the daughter’s misuse of love and the forlorn father – the three daughters of Lear merge to a single one of the clown. When the clown says “And I will not cry”, he makes Lear cry with him, he makes sure he implants a Lear in every audience’s heart – he makes them cry as well. It is imperative to state however that at times this interplay of theatre-reality and narrative-reality got over-played a bit – the reference of Edmund being an illegitimate son of Gloucester! The reflection that every individual is actually a tangent, a mark on legitimacy is a bit far-fetched and half-baked. However this can be treated as an aberration.

            Minimalism has been exercised in theatre for long. However, minimalism in any adaptation of King Lear (or well sort of) is not so obvious.  In the set design, to the characterization of a single actor playing Lear and fool and also a clown call for appreciation. Atul Kumar as Clown Lear is mesmerizing in his evocation. He is deft, subtle, physical and in moments of crises tucking on the strings. They always say, a clown is actually a sad person.  This clown says at one point “I hate clowns”. His submission to the cauldron of life makes him endearing. This is where Atul is so riveting – he moves with the grace of a swan, suddenly leaps like a leopard and then rests his case since he has no more word to speak.

            The dialogues are refreshing, punctuated with comical references all through-out, a must for satirical slants that try to internalize this style of theatre and involves audience participation to the full. Timing and the sense of it is important – the director made sure that the course of the play, the swings between the fade outs are punctuated to perfection. The filmic reference of the archetype father figure in the Japanese Samurai or the apparently rustic French accent have been borrowed for the sake of stripping the patina off any historical, cultural or social milieu. This works well but as I mentioned before, the swings from the clown’s (which is us – directly) world to the world of Lear (we are ‘believed’ to internalize Lear by then) is laden with few jerks which do tend to be jarring at times. Since this is the first show, I hope the director-actor duo will make it tighter, shedding redundant ornamental digressions for the sake of theatre.

            Odeon is the theatre festival organized by Vodafone for the last ten years, this year being the eleventh. The corporate organization spares nothing in promoting the festival which needless to say is skewed towards the elite of the society.  Art had always thrived with the help of entrepreneurs and theatre is no exception. The Bangla stage is reviving its lost glory with some profitable productions for the last two years or so. These festivals ensure that ideas are exchanged and the faith in this media is bolstered.

Clown Lear enforces that belief – amidst the pomp and glamour of the ruthless metro, there is time to sit back and reflect. Thank you Rajat Kapoor and Atul Kumar, for providing with that opportunity.