With Rage, He Flails in a World Gone Deaf
Ben BrantleyJanuary 16, 2014: Hey, who shut off the power? A magnificent incredulity flows, as hot and coursing as lava, from Frank Langella’s King Lear when he discovers that people are no longer quaking when he commands. It is evident in the affronted set of those boulder shoulders that here is someone who has never, ever been disobeyed. You just know that whether on the battlefield, at court or in the bedroom, Lear has always had only to crook his finger — and Mr. Langella knows how to crook — to have his every whim acted upon. And now, what’s this? Lesser mortals are ignoring the king’s demands, as if he were just anybody. Make that nobody. And that’s a shock to the system from which this aged monarch will never recover.
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