By Harry Haun It's a rarity, shrugged off as coincidence, for a high-profile nonprofit company to present two Shakespeares in a row, but nothing out of the ordinary for Bernard Gersten, who co-produced the show with Andre Bishop for Lincoln Center. "It's called a festival," airily declared Gersten, who learned the ropes from Joseph Papp down at The Public where back-to back Bards did (and still do) constitute the New York Shakespeare Festival.
Jonathan Miller ("He prefers Dr. more than Sir," tactfully asided a Lincoln Center flack) directed the play as he did in Stratford. Himself gray-haired, distinguished-looking and well Beyond the Fringe, he is the project's primary mover—and the person Plummer credits with the persuasive argument to do the piece in the first place: "We wanted to do something together, and he said, 'Well, you'd better play Lear before you croak!'"
That's the no-frills version. Dr. Miller's account of the conversion is a bit more elaborate and prickly. "We had a long talk about two or three years ago in which he said he wanted to do a comedy," he recalled. "He wanted to do Volpone. I said, 'No, no, no, no. If you want to do a comedy, you'd better do King Lear. It's the best comedy he ever wrote.' The tragedy takes care of itself, but only if you address yourself to what is comic about it.'"
And that goes for the comedic hair care that constitutes The Lear Look. Dr. Miller gives Plummer full credit for that, but it did take coaxing to get him on the right track. "I spent a lot of time trying to get him not to wear something that looked like 'Lord of the Rings.'"
05 Mar 2004
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—Harry Haun is staff writer for Playbill magazine, and has been attending Broadway opening nights since 1975.
