Full circle

King Lear (Robert Foxworht, left) begins his descent into madness as his Fool (Bruce Turk), chastened for once, looks on.

Despite what he’d have you think, King Lear’s worst enemy is not daughter Cordelia, whom the eponymous ruler disowns in a world-class hissy-fit. It’s William Shakespeare, of all people. The story—about an aging, sloppily sentimental, mentally sketchy English regent who seeks to bequeath his kingdom to his three girls in return for their vows of love—isn’t exactly the playwright’s best, because the secondary characters’ richness almost scuttles the plot en route to a life of its own.

The greatest flaw in this thing (and it’s a genuine one) is that Bill wrote it too well.

Adrian Noble, late of Britain’s Royal Shakespeare Company and now The Old Globe Theatre’s Summer Shakespeare Festival artistic director, is too smart to let an upstart under-story sabotage his debut. His prudent use of the stage, his eye for spectacle and his lead actor’s first-rate performance hold Shakespeare’s train of thought, marking this King Lear as among the best entries of the festival’s modern history. The irony is that the actor playing its central figure is returning after a stint in one of the worst Globe Shakespeares of the last seven years.

We have here a Lear (Robert Foxworth) who tempers his iron hand with an open heart. He’s thoroughly exhausted amid his lifelong conflict between fatherhood and leadership—but instead of crankily hiding behind his legacy, he’s downright approachable, even vaguely convivial, with most of those around him. We’re thus more sympathetic as he strays into madness and hysterically mourns the death of Cordelia (Catherine Gowl), who’s returned to help him in his misfortunes. The subplot may be a little beefy, but it’s vital to Cordelia’s tragedy—she’s hanged by renegade Edmund (an excellent Jonno Roberts), who underscores Lear’s instability with some shakiness of his own.

The play’s traditional storm sequence is a force of nature (pun intended), ushering Lear off the deep end. It whips blinding autumn rains across Ralph Funicello’s stark set and sets up Deirdre Clancy’s catchy shift in costume design, the most capricious element in the show.

Globe associate artist Foxworth played the festival in 2003, appearing as the traitorous Marcus Brutus in Julius Caesar. The show, first in the theater’s latest string of summer Shakespeare pieces, was among the most horrendous in the annals of performance artistry, and I left the theater then hoping Foxworth might command a better vehicle down the road. His performance marks that point—the conflict that eventually drives his Lear mad is eminently believable, and Noble and the creatives outfit the show with just the right visuals to illustrate it. Very, very good.

This review is based on the opening-night performance of June 26. King Lear runs through Sept. 23 at The Lowell Davies Festival Theater, 1363 Old Globe Way in Balboa Park. $29-$56. oldglobe.org