Forum - CANADA'S ESKIMO 'LEAR'

[Note: text of article has omitted endnotes #9 and #44.]

David Gardner

In 1961, David Gardner was asked to direct King Lear for the Canadian Players. He discusses his Eskimo concept for the production. A shortened version of this paper was delivered at the American Society for Theatre Research on 22 November 1985.

En 1961 David Gardner accepta de diriger King Lear pour la troupe des Canadian Players. Ici il discute le concept qui lui venu alors d'une production 'esquimaude' de la pièce. Une version raccourcie de cet article fut lue lors d'une réunion de la American Society for Theatre Research, le 22 novembre 1985.

Of all of Shakespeare's plays, the setting - the geographic location of King Lear - is the most ambiguous. The fairy-tale names of Goneril, Regan, Cordelia, and Lear seem physically removed and culturally indeterminate. Similarly, the lords of Albany, Cornwall, Kent and Gloucester exist in the play as the names of characters but never as indications of place. In his famous essay on King Lear, A.C. Bradley remarks that 'This world is called Britain; but we should no more look for it in an atlas than for the place, called Caucasus, where Prometheus was chained ...' ¹ Actually in the text, Britain is never identified. Only two locales are specifically named: France and the channel port of Dover.

Thanks to Nahum Tate's 1681 sensibilities, King Lear required a happy ending throughout the 18th century to make it palatable. To Charles Lamb, writing in 1811, Lear was 'essentially impossible to be represented on a stage'. However, over the centuries, Shakespeare's monumental tragedy was seen, and designed in many periods and styles, inevitably reflecting the time and country in which the play was presented. Since the end of World War II, both in Canada and abroad, the trend has been towards a design that is non-repesentational, most probably because the international movement in art has gone in that direction, but also, perhaps, because the madness and chaotic despair of King Lear has touched deeper and more universal chords in the post-atomic age. Being of mythic proportions, the Lear drama seems to have gained from either cultural or abstract distancing. To make the ancient play modern we have reduced it to components that are elemental and virtually timeless. Of course any design satisfies or fails in proportion to the degree that it makes visual the inner heart of a play, and, as Lamb implied,² almost inevitably Shakespeare's King Lear remains greater in concept than any three-dimensional realization of it. One of the challenges is to capture the epic range of Lear, the descent from the ornate trappings of power to the utter degradation and simplicity of 'unaccommodated man' (III, iv, 12). But the major problem is the marriage of a pagan, near-primitive tribal and hunting society with medieval castles, jesters and the traditions of knighthood.

Most 20th century productions of King Lear have been set in the Dark Ages, that vague British non-period somewhere between Stonehenge and the gothic cycle plays. Stratford Ontario's rough-hewn 1985-86 touring production, featuring Douglas Campbell and directed by John Hirsch, fell into this category, although designer Chris Dyer is said to have been influenced by the shapes of ancient Japanese and Russian peasant garb, as well.³ It is surprising in recent times how often the Far East has contributed to the look of Lear. Two earlier Stratford Festival productions also echoed the Middle Ages. Michael Langham held us enthralled with a surprisingly low-keyed and tension-packed interpretation in 1964, in which John Colicos portrayed the king. Although it was made memorable for me by its stress upon the domesticity of the situation, I recall as well a heart-stopping moment when a portcullis crashed down to lock Lear out-of-doors on the night of the storm. Leslie Hurry's exotic and painterly design techniques were applied to the subtly Saxon costumes. The dyes were earthy and the palette muted in keeping with the production concept.

William Hutt played Stratford's second Lear in 1972, a showcase production directed by David William that toured Europe the following year, from Copenhagen to Leningrad. I regret not having seen it, but the production photos ⁴ suggest a darkly cruel and barbaric era springing out of a modern imagination. The English designer Annena Stubbs clothed her players in sleek black leather strips laced together and encrusted with sculptural medallions and amulets of possibly celtic derivation. The three daughters wore elaborate metallic headdresses, and the opening scene was startling in its use of enormous eighteen-foot leather trains for the aged king and his royal offspring.

Once more at Stratford, this time for the 1979 and 1980 seasons, Robin Phillips and his designer Daphne Dare gave us a mid-Victorian, proscenium arch version at the Avon Theatre. This rare representational production starred the fey and idiosyncratic Peter Ustinov. I remember neat and tidy drawing-rooms, burnished furniture, and uniformed soldiers with shiny boots. There was a very English, fine-spray rainstorm in which Ustinov was supported by a Fool who was of equal age (William Hutt again), an excellent touch that. However, the highly tailored and tightly corsetted 19th century seemed at odds with the play's pre-Christian spirit.

More in tune with the Middle Ages and the elemental was John Woods's 1977 monochromatic Lear at the Neptune Theatre in Halifax. Eric Donkin was the king and the costumes by Canadian actor-designer Peter Blais were crochetted from hempen string and cord of various thicknesses. The itchy twine was either tightly looped to resemble chain mail or tied off in loose net-like patterns. The costumes were lined so that they could be worn against the skin and the strong panels were supplemented with burlap and jute erosion cloth. Spiny details in copper, gold and beaten metal were added. The powerful disc setting was by John Ferguson, but it was the costumes that made headlines. It was nick-named, affectionately, the string or macramé Lear.⁵

Many international productions have veered towards the non-representational. Perhaps the most daring and provocative design was that created in 1955 by the Japanese artist, Isamu Noguchi, for John Gielgud's London production. Here, the wardrobe and scenery were treated as abstract sculpture. Lear's opening robe, for example, was a stiffish screen of small holes; holes which grew symbolically larger as the old king was reduced from everything to nothing. Although the critics had a field day, vindictively describing the cloak as a 'slab of swiss cheese', there were many who were moved strongly by the production's curious removal from reality.

Orson Welles brought Lear to Broadway in 1956. Giant greystone monoliths towered over the performers, the height accentuated by the fact that Welles was obliged at the time to play the central role in a wheelchair.

Peter Brook's mid-1960s Lear with Paul Scofield was another stripped of the panoply of old-fashioned Shakespearean staging. Inspired by Jan Kott's 1965 essay,⁶ which compared King Lear to Samuel Beckett's Endgame, Brook chose a highly stylized stage design of grey and copper panels, with clothing made from homespun fabrics and leather. Although Brook's black and white cinematic treatment of the Scofield Lear had to revert to a more recognizeable reality, the director retained the sense of a dark and nameless kingdom, a brooding feudal landscape reminiscent of the Japanese samurai films.

Akira Kurosawa's 1985 motion picture Ran (meaning 'chaos') is a 16^th century hybrid of Shakespeare's King Lear and Japanese legend. In Kurosawa's film the great warlord divides his kingdom among his three sons and the wicked daughters are fused into a single woman of extraordinary sexual malevolence. The Gloucester subplot is removed but awkwardly, and I suspect anachronistically, the Fool is retained. The film comes into its own in the second half, once the slow and sleepy formalism of the opening scenes erupts into spectacular depictions of Medieval carnage. Shots of the lonely crazed Lear running through flowers are juxtaposed with harsh 'Brechtian' images of charging horses, and a veritable rain of spears, arrows and bloody devastation. It is a film of remarkable contrasts typified by the bold and colourful Academy Award-winning costumes of Emi Wadi. Scenes with loose and silky kimonos in brilliant primary hues are followed by smoky mechanistic hordes in rigid lacquered armour.

Somehow these meetings of East and West have seemed right for Lear. There have been other cross-cultural productions. I am sure I remember hearing of a Viking version and we have seen the more familiar 'Stonehenge Lears' borrow inspiration from the Celts and Druids.

Twenty-five years ago, in the summer of 1961, I was asked to direct Shakespeare's masterwork for the Canadian Players, a barebones classical touring company that flourished in the decades between 1954 and 1965. The Canadian Players had been founded by Tom Patterson and Douglas Campbell as a fall and winter spinoff for Ontario's famed Stratford Shakespearean Festival. The troupes travelled by bus from coast to coast in Canada, and as far south as Texas in the United States.⁷ Eventually they had two companies criss-crossing North America.

It was not my first Lear. Six months earlier at Toronto's Crest Theatre, I had been asked in an emergency to take over a production of King Lear when the director for it suddenly was not available. I inherited the cast and a rather impressive set design in wood (by Michael Johnston) with one week's notice before rehearsals were scheduled to begin. There was little or no time for much creative input. Budget restrictions necessitated that the costuming be essentially 'found' rather than designed. (We used to call shows like that as coming from the 'early Malabar' period). Mavor Moore had played the title role before for the New Play Society. However, we worked well together and Mavor was delighted at my discovery that the old king does not really go mad but sane. Mavor created a dry, authoritative and surprisingly witty Lear who sported a walking-stick. Eric House was the Fool, and a beguiling one. We began the production with Eric curled asleep on the king's throne. It was the production of Lear on which I cut my teeth.

With my second Lear I was determined not only to avoid old-fashioned and traditional styles, but to try perhaps to put a stamp on the production. Much like Lee Breuer's American attempts in the 1980s to marry black gospel culture with Greek tragedy, ⁸ I longed to find a uniquely North American or Canadian interpretation of Shakespeare's world classic.

I was lying in the sun, visiting with friends on an island in Georgian Bay, when I hit upon the idea of a Native Peoples Lear, either Amerindian or Eskimo; a non-Christian semi-oriental culture introduced to America across the Bering land-bridge and reaching back centuries before the coming of the Europeans, perhaps as far back as the stone age. I settled quite quickly on an arctic Lear situated on top of the world, Eskimo rather than Indian, because of an extra sense of bleak removal and heightened universality. Above the tree line, in the far north, the shapes were more organic, more abstract, an endless horizon shaped by the wind. As Gloucester says 'for many miles about / there's not a bush' (II, iv, 299-300). And the key-word that echoes throughout King Lear is 'nothing'.

In any transposition of a play there are bound to be negatives and positives. I remember the excitement with which I picked up the text to re-read it in the light of some preliminary Eskimo research. Almost immediately I became conscious of Shakespeare's medieval knights and jester. There was no thought in my mind of altering the Fool, and the hundred knights were Shakespeare's way of establishing the peak of Lear's power and authority. I toyed with substituting words like 'men' instead of 'knights'. But, while 'one hundred men' would have worked, it was flat and dull, and 'hunters' wouldn't scan. No, we had to live with the knights and make them work. On the positive side a king who hunted was appropriate. Rather than an English deer I hoped our hunters might return perhaps with a polar bear or walrus. However, we compromised with strings of fish instead. The Fool, however, was a problem to be shelved for awhile.

Classical and neo-classical allusions are sprinkled throughout the text. In the hovel Lear speaks of Edgar as a 'learned Theban' (III, iv, 156), or a 'good Athenian' (III, iv, 179), and comments on Kent's 'Persian' garments (III, vi, 80-81). And both Kent and Lear are prone to swear by Juno (II, iv, 21) by Jupiter (I, i, 180) and by Apollo, (I, i, 161) (the sun-god in a winter of perpetual darkness?) Shakespeare, too, is consistent in keeping King Lear pagan. We hear of the gods, but never of one God ('as flies to wanton boys, are we to th' Gods' cries Gloucester) (IV, 1, 37) And Lear prays only to the Sun (I, i, 110) or, like Edmund, to nature (I, iv, 274) ('Thou, Nature, art my goddess') (I, ii, 1) But a pagan shaman-like Lear in Ancient Britain would know no more about classical Greece or Rome, or 'The barbarous Scythian' (I, i, 117), than our Lear above the Arctic Circle, unless he had made contact with other civilizations and, of course, the script is explicit about contact at least with France. It helped us pinpoint an imaginary time-frame. Eastern Canada in the 17th and early 18th centuries was entirely French. In our minds the realm of France would be New France and so, accordingly, in dress and accent, we adjusted the lords of Burgundy and France to make them sound and look French-Canadian, with just a suggestion of that 'lucky Pierre' patois.

Having solved the problem of France, we tackled the other place-name, Dover. It was one of the two words we had to change. 'Dover' was replaced by 'the sea' ('Where hast thou sent the king? / To the sea. / Wherefore to sea? Let him first answer that') (III, vii, 51-53). We argued that audiences in North America were not likely to miss Dover, and 'the sea' made the intention to escape to France (or New France) still valid. And a 'chalky bourn' (IV, vi, 57), is a chalky cliff wherever you find it.

Naturally, the legendary storm scene could not be altered. Much as we would have liked to turn the rain into snow, the thunder, lightning and water are integral to the speeches. The Fool, for instance, must sing of 'the wind and the rain' (III, ii, 75), and of holy-water in a dry house being 'better than this rain-water out o'door'(III, ii, 10-11). However, it could be a cold rain, the last storm of the short temperate arctic summer and the harbinger of the long winter to come. The near-naked Edgar disguised as the beggar, Tom O'Bedlam, could say with real conviction 'Tom's a-cold' (III, iv, 171). Once again, the decision about the storm scene helped to give us another time-frame. It would serve in the play as the transition from autumn to winter. With greater technical resources, or on film, we could have realized the second half of he play more obviously as a snowscape. We conceived of it as such in our acting using images of figures linked together in zero visibility. And Gloucester blinded wore bloodied, prehistoric, Eskimo snow goggles, slabs of wood held over the eyes by thong with tiny slits to see through and keep the weather out. It was interesting to learn in my research that true Eskimos would consider 15 below zero as a relative heat wave, warm enough to strip to the waist while riding on a dog-sled. However, we counted on our North American audiences having a different threshold for cold. The great themes of shelter and exposure were well served by the arctic setting.

In weighing up the pros and cons of going with the Eskimo concept, the balance was tipped in favour by the language. Innumerable words, phrases and metaphors which previously had slipped by, leapt out from the pages: 'The bow is bent and drawn; make from the shaft' (I, i, 144); 'and thou canst not smile as the wind sits, thou'lt catch cold shortly' (I, iv, 96-97); 'Winter's not gone yet, if the wild geese fly that way' (11, iv, 46). Then, too, Shakespeare's allusions to the natural and animal order would be the reference points of a primitive northern people. Lear's overtures to the ,sacred radiance of the sun' (I, i, 110) are matched by Gloucester's superstitious talk of 'late eclipses in the sun and moon' (I, ii, 104). And bird and bestial imagery abounds, whether the Fool's "hedge-sparrow [that] fed the cuckoo so long" (I, iv, 212), or Poor Tom's frogs, toads, rats and small deer (III, iv, 129-137). Edmund has a 'goatish disposition' (I, ii, 129-130), and the wicked daughters are she-foxes' (III, vi, 22) with 'wolvish visages' (I, iv, 307); 'sea-monsters' (I, iv, 259), 'pelicans' (III, iv, 75), 'detested kites' (I, iv, 260) and 'serpent like' (II, ii, 159), 'dog-hearted' (IV, iii, 45), 'tigers' (IV, ii, 40) who have tied 'sharp-tooth'd unkindness, like a vulture' (II, iv, 133) to the heart of Lear.

The only animals that seemed out of place were not the ferocious lions and tigers, but the horses. Although the French had introduced horses to Canada by the mid 17th century, they were not common in the far north. I felt it was the kind of detail that would have jarred if we had left it untouched. While Lear still has his hundred followers he shouts 'Saddle my horses. Call my train together' (I, iv, 251). We kept 'Call my train together,' but cut 'Saddle my horses.' For other references to horses we substituted the word "team". Goneril's steward asked 'Where may we set our team?' (II, ii, 3). Some of the travelling scenes were bridged with the sounds of dogs barking; of all the animals in the text they are the most frequently mentioned (see III, vi, 63-73). We made a few other trims like the section referring to the medieval rights of knighthood in the Fifth Act confrontation between Edgar and Edmund (V, iii, 144). We found that a little judicious cutting solved most of our problems. But only the words 'Dover' and 'horses' were altered.

There were two central weaknesses in our Eskimo interpretation: the social conditioning of the people themselves and the concept of property. The evil, avaricious and finally, military-minded aspects we see in King Lear are not evoked easily by the historic image of the happy and stoical Eskimo. However, there have been Eskimo murders and suicides. Violence and hanging are common enough. Old people were put outside to die when their lives were no longer productive. And one has heard of wife-borrowing (and even cannibalism), all symptoms of a nomadic people who existed by hunting and a moral code based on survival and superstition. But the ancient Eskimos had little or no sense of royalty, political manoeuvring or governmental structure, even of a tribal nature. Instead, families clustered together led by a master-hunter who was also usually a shaman. Here we seemed to be on firmer ground for Lear is fundamentally a domestic tragedy about two families. Lear's pagan power too, has shamanic overtones. He does not bid 'the thunder-bearer shoot' ¹⁰ and his famous curse of sterility against Goneril (I, iv, 274ff) has the ring of the angakok, or Eskimo witch-doctor, about it. Certainly, the wilderness ordeal on the heath, by which Lear comes to understand some of the spiritual truths about existence, is a shamanic experience.

However, nomadic peoples do not own land and it is difficult to imagine anyone near the north pole caring about the division of a kingdom in three. On this we had to ask an audience to suspend their disbelief, and remind them that Shakespeare's tragedy is a mythic fairy tale and Lear's realm a kingdom of the imagination.

My set and costume designer was Herbert Whittaker, who had already designed two Lear productions in Montreal. He was enthusiastic about the idea of an arctic Lear, putting himself into the framework of a band of Eskimos preparing a production of Shakespeare's play using the objects and the way of life they knew around them. Costumes were based on authentic clothing designs and made of simulated hides and furs. Fur seemed to suggest both royalty and the animal-state ('Through tatter'd rags small vices do appear, / Robes and furr'd gowns hides all') (IV, vi, 165-66). Both the men and the women were in parkas and mukluks. Life magazine called it 'Lear in a Parka'. ¹¹ The Eskimo man rarely grows a beard, which meant that William Hutt who played the king would be at a disadvantage in portraying the age of Lear. Whittaker designed a huge collar which surrounded the actor's face with a nimbus of white fur which blended with his wig to give the illusion of a bearded patriarch. The Hudson's Bay Company generously provided wolf skins, and Hudson's Bay blankets were turned into colourful bush jackets for the King of France and Duke of Burgundy, the French 'outsiders' who came as coureurs de bois from New France.

Whittaker solved the problem of the Fool by recognizing the essential nature of Shakespeare's immortal character as a favoured and fondled pet. Our fool was part seal, part penguin and part wise old owl. His renaissance songs were transposed into the Eskimo idiom.

Swords were replaced with daggers made of tusk or bone. Battles were fought with bows and arrows, whips, spears, harpoons, quarter-staves and, if memory serves, one bolas-like weapon swung in the air. Lanterns became either torches or Eskimo lamps - wicks floating in a dish of oil. The map in Scene One and the subsequent letters were made of soft leather. Lear wore a crown of walrus tusks for his first entrance and carried a ceremonial spear. The Eskimos have a flat circular drum with a handle which we used for summoning, or for lines like 'Far off, methinks, I hear the beaten drum' (IV, vi, 2 89). Trumpet blasts were replaced with the eerie soundings of horns made seemingly from the hollowed antlers of animals. I think we actually used a Near Eastern call to prayer. To underline Edgar's propensity for disguising himself he entered a little drunk and therefore gullible to Edmund's suggestions, and carrying a mask reproduced from an original Eskimo design. In the end he challenged Edmund masked in snow goggles like his blinded father. Kent's stocks were simply a single heavy log which opened to enclose the ankles somewhat like a bear-trap. One reviewer, getting into the spirit of the production, criticized the anomalous stocks and made the interesting suggestion that a cage fashioned from the skeleton of a whale would have been more appropriate.¹²

The set consisted of sloping triangular ramps which had to pack away into the touring bus and serve a multitude of different stage sizes. These ramps were set at an angle before a cold, ice-green, panoramic backcloth of horizontal lines diminishing into infinity; the whole dominated by a white polar sun borrowed from an Eskimo print design and utilized as well as a logo on the poster. There was no furniture. The ramps or block-shapes served for seating. Interior scenes were suggested by a screen of animal skins or poles which could fall together to make the kind of 'wigwam' the northern people used for shelter when there was no snow with which to make an igloo or an ice palace. There was one symbolic vertical shape that served as the backing for Lear's throne in the opening, and then suggested a tomb-stone at other times. At the height of our electronic storm, Lear pulled this great shape over upon himself. In the play's closing image the other actors moved off downstage and into the wings leaving the dead Lear and Cordelia seemingly floating out to sea on a cake of ice - one of the traditional ways in which the elderly Eskimos depart life. We aimed for sculptural lighting and actor groupings as carved and dynamic as Eskimo soapstone figurines. Again, one of the critics saw in our treatment of the setting more than we intended. For him our 'blasted heath' was the world left void after a nuclear attack.¹³

With all this talk about the physical and conceptual side of the Eskimo Lear production, we must not forget the actors. In the end, everything Herbert Whittaker and I attempted was done only to serve their performances. It was William Hutt's first Lear and he was universally acclaimed by the critics: 'one of the few actors who constantly give clean and beautiful shape to words,' ¹⁴ 'now tender, now terrible'; ¹⁵ 'disarmingly human and sympathetic in the title role'; ¹⁶ 'one of the greatest actors on the English-speaking stage ... more than a match for the staggering histrionic demands of this towering tragedy ... . It is good to have him back in Canada and to see him in a role worthy of his protean talent.' ¹⁷ The small touring cast of thirteen (playing eighteen roles) received favourable notices as well: Tobi Weinberg as Goneril displayed 'enormous reserves of power and sensuality'; ¹⁸ 'playing with almost frightening conviction the role of a driving princess dressed to the fangs in wolfskins and matching heart ... whose love scenes with Henry Hovencamp were enough to melt some of the smaller imaginary icebergs.' ¹⁹ Hovencamp 'played Edmond, the bastard son, with flashes of brilliant rightness.' ²⁰ 'This young actor has the face and physical strength to match his obvious idol - Sir Laurence,' ²¹ and he 'teamed with the Edgar of David Renton to make a convincing pair of ill-matched sons of Gloucester. I believe completely in both of them all evening.' ²² Renton 'was disturbing in his isolation. His "Poor Tom's a cold", chilled us all.' ²³ 'Herbert Foster as the Fool is beautifully lucid and very moving.' ²⁴ Maureen Fitzgerald 'as Regan, put fire and hatred' into her role as one of the 'hellcat daughters.' ²⁵ 'Judith Coates is a youthful and affecting Cordelia,' ²⁶ and 'contributes one moment of radiance.' ²⁷ Mervyn Blake's Kent had 'quiet strength. He seemed at times carved from the rocks on which he steadfastly stood.' ²⁸ 'As Gloucester, Charles Palmer was eloquent. The startling, bloody scene in which his eyes are plucked out and thrown across the stage was horrifying [peeled grapes were used], but in keeping with the dreadful power of the whole production.' ²⁹ 'Kenneth Pogue as Albany ... and William Brydon as Cornwall ... played with fine contrast... ' 'Other roles - all conforming to the high standards set by the other players - were taken by Kenneth Wickes, as Oswald ... and Rex Southgate, as France.' ³⁰

There is no doubt that the production itself created controversy and attracted unexpected attention. Certainly, it played to sell-out crowds across North America, and on December 1, 1961 was reported to have enjoyed at least one cheering, standing ovation in Hanover, New Hampshire.³¹ In the English press there are certain weekly and/or monthly theatre periodicals that explore the intentions behind an unusual interpretation and analyze its success or failure. Regrettably, in North America, the Eskimo Lear did not receive this kind of critical analysis. However, while the overnight newspaper reviews tend to treat theatre productions primarily as news events, each of the dozen or so reviews that I have been able to assemble, express fairly strong reactions to the performances and to the arctic setting. On the balance it is clear that the majority of reviewers essentially resisted the Eskimo concept while at the same time admiring the production itself. '"King Lear" Entrances Despite Setting Change' was the way one Canton, Ohio critic headed his critique. ³²

Before coming to the Eskimo concept per se, let us put the production into some perspective. Judging from the following review headlines it was a heightened theatrical experience: 'Advice to Lovers of Theater: See "King Lear",' ³³ 'Fine "King Lear" fires enthusiasm;' ³⁴ 'Stratford Company Does Well By Bard' ; ³⁵ 'King Lear is Magnificent Theatre'; ³⁶ 'A Touching, Noble Performance;' ³⁷ '"Lear" play Compelling, True to Life'; ³⁸ as well as two more qualified headings both from Toronto, 'King Lear Ranges From Good to Bad;' ³⁹ and 'Odd Clash of Style in Eskimo "Lear".' ⁴⁰

The direction was praised specifically for its 'vigor' ⁴¹ and 'tremendous vitality': ⁴² Lear 'opens at a spanking pace and rarely lets up'; ⁴³ 'it moved swiftly and cohesively'; 'throughout the more than three hours production his [Gardner's] pace is taut and his variety of mood as wide as the material permits.' ⁴⁵ The stage compositions also came in for notice: 'Gardner's stage grouping is beautifully accomplished,' ⁴⁶ and 'he has done much to underline the meaning of the play and has achieved a beauty of grouping that was at times sculptural.' ⁴⁷ However, especially early in the run, we obviously had problems finding proper speaking levels. On opening night (October 20, 1961) there were criticisms about 'a lack of audibility,' ⁴⁸ while in Toronto, for the second performance, the play 'is always audible, even deafening,' ^49> 'although there is too much hasty, muffled and careless speaking.' ⁵⁰

Of course, the Eskimo concept was the primary focus of the reviews and by compiling the critics' opinion a kind of consensus emerges. We opened King Lear in London, Ontario. J. Burke Martin, writing for the London Free Press, was rhapsodic about Bill Hutt's performance (see above) but disagreed with the idea of an Eskimo treatment in this way: 'It is all very well to argue that this is a wintry play. Of course it is. I might have accepted a vaguely chilly atmosphere. But this Lear setting is not vague, it is explicitly Eskimo in furry costumes - excellent ones by the way - ... This kind of originality contributes nothing to my enjoyment of the play, and that simple criterion is all I have.' ⁵¹ The Toronto critics were the toughest and it was undoubtedly a mistake to play Toronto for our second performance. Wendy Michener writing in The Toronto Star, said: 'Eskimo civilization is only relevant to Lear in certain general aspects which it shares with other primitive societies. There are moments in the present production when all this can be forgotten, but too often this one 'good idea' corrupts the play .... The costumes by Herbert Whittaker might have avoided incongruity by being less authentically Eskimo. His settings were economically useful, and are obviously well suited to a touring company.' ⁵² 'There was a prolonged ovation at the end of last night's performance by the Canadian Players', wrote Ralph Hicklin for Mr. Whittaker's own Globe and Mail, 'but it could scarcely have been the applause of an audience purged by pity and terror. For this was a bleak and frigid realization of Shakespeare's supreme tragedy ... [the] set - an ice-green cyclorama with horizontal dark green stripes and a white sun, along with iceberg-colored ramps - was serviceable but constricting.' ⁵³ Rose Macdonald, in the Toronto Telegram, argued that while 'Theoretically its an excellent provocative idea to play King Lear in Arctic setting .... Actually the translation has disadvantages that nullify theoretical values ... [and] the general stage effect last night was trite.' ⁵⁴ Robertson Davies's daughter, Miranda, however, was more sympathetic. Writing in the University of Toronto's student newspaper The Varsity, she said: 'The setting of a play in a place and period for which it was not specifically written is bound to arouse controversy and even hearty dislike, but it often provides an arresting and new illumination of the play .... Gardiner's treatment vividly draws out of the play its elemental force, physical grandeur, and human passion.' ⁵⁵ As the tour progressed the response to the concept warmed somewhat. Muncie, Indiana, was the first date in the United States. Their reviewer felt that Lear 'was just as compelling and true a picture in a strange Arctic setting as it was in the old familiar script.' ⁵⁶ However, two nights later in Canton, Ohio, 'this reviewer was delighted to find that William Shakespeare's ability as a playwrite [sic] could transcend an unnecessary change of setting .... One wonders why the cliffs of Dover failed to satisfy the Stratford director, just as one is bemused by the pseudo-Eskimo costumes which added little to the play itself.' ⁵⁷ And in Ashland, Ohio, we read: 'Director David Gardner has staged the bleak and bloody tale of filial infidelity and the not-so-golden years in a raw arctic kingdom at the top of a primative [sic] world. Herbert Whittaker's uniquely fashioned settings and costumes drew heavily upon the rapt, if sometimes puzzled, audience but did not seriously overtax it.' ⁵⁸ 'Dressing up Shakespeare's plays in unlikely trappings has become a common American custom in recent years,' explained Life magazine's anonymous critic. 'Troilus and Cressida has been done in Civil War style, Much Ado About Nothing in a southwestern hacienda and Twelfth Night in cowboy get-ups. But for all its stunty quality, Canada's arctic Lear had some artistic merits .... It was easy to imagine a howling arctic blizzard in the heath scene ...' ⁵⁹

Back in Canada, we had one of the most extended and balanced examinations of the Eskimo approach from Charles Wilkinson reviewing for The Hamilton Spectator:

With slight amplification in cast and scenery, this production is worthy of Stratford at its best [Stratford had not yet produced its first Lear] ... As is so often the case in modern productions of Shakespeare, a gimmick has been considered necessary to provide a fresh approach ... Lear and the other players wear the furs of Eskimos and other northern dwellers. The scenery includes tents and a fishing net. The crude weapons carried include harpoon-like spears. For sound effects there are howling of dogs and weird, tribal music. The impression, as it is intended to be, is primitive and pagan, and lends strength to the violence of emotion which marks this play. On the other hand, it cannot help but draw undue attention to background and costumes at times. The contrast between the beauty and flow of Shakespeare's language and the rough appearance of the speakers is marked. It is impossible, too, without rewriting Shakespeare, and renaming characters, to get away from such familiar references as the British counties which give their names to some of the players - Kent, Gloucester and Cornwall. All these are liable to conjure up conflicting pictures in the minds of the audience ... Fortunately, one is able after a time to get used to the background sufficiently to let the majesty of the poet's words and the skill of the actors monopolize the attention. ⁶⁰

This seemed to mark a turning-point. 'While purists might miss the medieval trappings, most of the audience apparently did not,' remarked Time Magazine. The photo caption under Bill Hutt enthroned read 'Cold, terrible and real.' ⁶¹ In Guelph, Don MacKay, the dramatic critic for The Guardian, found the 'receptive audience awakened by a Canadian interpretation that has taken a daring and compelling look at the intricate tragedy of the aging King ... one begins to know what theatre is all about. It also creates a challenge to a reviewer; so many are the ideas such an evening provokes.' ⁶² MacKay was the critic who longed for a more inventive handling of the stocks and the one who found that Whittaker's setting evoked 'the void' left by 'nuclear cauterization'. ⁶³ And two nights later, in Albany, New York, the Times-Union Staff Writer Michael Pilley enthused that

This Canadian company accomplishes miracles with Shakespeare's difficult material ... On a major count, he [Gardner] deserves acclamation for his imaginative move in giving the British, pre-Christian epic an ageless, Arctic setting - a thing of austere remoteness admirably apt for Lear's struggles with nature and the nature of man ... [he] scores with telling bits of business that extract the maximum of incidental humour from a work essentially grim in tone ... The Arctic setting will not please everyone. To some, the British and French names will fall strangely from figures clad in shaggy furs and Eskimo-type headgear. (This shouldn't be so since Shakespeare's characters were anachronistically named anyway.) But I think most playgoers will find the stark, cold setting 'on top of the world' a fitting foil for the fire and fury of the Lear legend. Certainly it is far enough removed from our reality that we can concentrate on the universality of the play's tragedic elements, and can see in the seemingly larger than life figure of the King a personification of man in conflict. ⁶⁴

And finally, at Bay City, Michigan, in January 1962, the critical circle was completed: 'The Canadians perform King Lear for the first time in [the] history of the theatre in Arctic setting. And no background could seem more right ... There seemed nothing 'stunty' about the setting to the audience. All the skins and hides seemed right, gave a feeling of realism, as cold and terrible as it ought to be.' ⁶⁵

Would I do an arctic Lear again?

Yes and no.

I think there was a basic point about abstraction to be learned from the critics. Herbie and I spent too much time in the Royal Ontario Museum. In 1961 it was exciting to replicate authentic Eskimo garb. That had never been done before (nor since), but I think we could have achieved the same impact less realistically and more suggestively. Keep the northern cold, keep the furs, but find a greater freedom with the lines of the costumes. Make them less identifiably Eskimo. With the setting we had to make too many compromises for touring. The backdrop screen, for example, was too small, 'a sea-green trampoline' said Burke Martin.⁶⁶ It had to be designed to fit into the back of a bus. The concept cried out for a vast, white, wrap-around cyclorama. The ramping was right but, again, depending on the size of the particular touring stage, the triangular blocks were either dwarfed and lonely in centrestage, or tightly crowded against the wings.⁶⁷ Ideally, a production in one location could have a fixed design filled with interesting sloping shapes. We also needed to resolve the interior scenes in a more convincing way.

In retrospect, I think our attempt to find an original cross-cultural springboard for Shakespeare's tragic masterpiece succeeded. For us, it gave the production a sharper artistic focus. We were encouraged to stretch for the haunting extremes within the play: its primitive, animalistic savagery at one end of the scale, and its achingly lonely monumentality on the other.

It was not just another production of King Lear dressed in a safe and borrowed tradition. There were risks involved for players and audience alike. For Canadians, at the time, it meant for a moment that we had made one of the great plays in the classic repertoire our own. There was a thrill to that and I think something almost metaphoric in the choice of setting. We live along a northern frontier. Winter exposure can mean death or madness. As members of a small, proud nation, Canadians (like King Lear) have tasted the threat of being shoved aside, exiled and forgotten. We know, too, a lot about the selfish cruelty of small-mindedness. The French fact is an integral part of our being, and yet we exist like separate nations needing the alliance and example of Cordelia to release the love we hold back from each other. I think, perhaps, some of these elements were touched upon, at least subliminally, by the Eskimo Lear of 1961.

For all the artistic justifications behind the Eskimo concept, there was as well, a strong nationalistic motive at work. Canada's Eskimo Lear happened at a time when the Canadian theatre was just getting into gear and Canada was openly attempting to discover its own identity, and doing so by very belatedly honouring the art and culture of its Native Peoples. Only one critic, Wendy Michener, was sensitive in part to this intention, ticking off our exploitation of an Eskimo association with Shakespeare as 'rank nationalism, a longing for glory we haven't earned.' ⁶⁸

It was amusing and ironic to learn that sometimes the company on tour was thought to be an actual troupe of Eskimo performers. But, what price Canadian cultural nationalism when, at a party following a performance at an American College, a gentleman expressed to me his delight that a group of Canadians would help honour America's newest state in this unique way, by bringing down a production that was set in Alaska!

Howl, howl, howl, howl, (V, iii, 256)!

Notes

Forum - CANADA'S ESKIMO 'LEAR'
[Note: text of article has omitted endnotes #9 and #44.]

David Gardner

1 A.C. BRADLEY Shakespearean Tragedy. London: Macmillan & Co. Ltd. 1960 p 214
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2 Charles Lamb 'On Shakespeare's Stage Productions' (1811) included in Theatre and Drama in the Making, vol 2, ed JOHN GASSNER and RALPH G. ALLEN Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company 1964, p 506
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3 I am grateful to co-designer Judy Peyton Ward for this information
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4 I am grateful to Dan Ladell, archivist for the Stratford Festival, for allowing me to see these photographs
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5 I am grateful to director John Woods, assistant Bill Malmo and actor Stephen Russell, for discussing the Neptune production with me
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6 JAN KOTT '"King Lear", or "Endgame"' Shakespeare our Contemporary London: Methuen & Co. Limited, 1965 (revised 1967), pp 100-133
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7 The 1961-62 Canadian Players tour of King Lear opened in London, Ontario, 20 October 1961, played 10 Southern Ontario dates and then gave 45 performances in 38 American towns and cities in 22 different states of the USA, and returned to continue touring in Canada for 80 more occasions. It was paired with CHRISTOPHER FRY's The Lady's Not for Burning. Both productions were directed by David Gardner and designed by Herbert Whittaker. The acting company starred William Hutt (King Lear) and Tobi Weinberg (Goneril). It featured, in alphabetical order, Mervyn Blake (Kent), William Brydon (Cornwall, The Doctor, Edmund's Captain), Judith Coates (Cordelia), Maureen Fitzgerald (Regan), Herbert Foster (Fool, Burgundy), Henry Hovencamp (Edmund), Charles Palmer (Gloucester), Kenneth Pogue (Albany), David Renton (Edgar), Rex Southgate (France, Lear's Knight, Curan) and Kenneth Wickes (Oswald). Production Manager, Jean Roberts; Stage Manager, Judy Wright; Fights staged by Jonathan White; Eskimo song settings, Morris Surdin; Sound effects, Freddie Tudor; Photography, Lutz Dille. The costumes were made by Barbara Mattingly and properties by Frederick Nihda. The bus driver was Gordon Litt.
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8 LEE BREUER'S productions in this vein include Sister Suzie's Cinema, Gospel at Colonnus and The Warrior Ant.
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9 Some further examples of cutting were: 'I found it (thrown in at the casement of my closet)' I ii ll 60-61; 'There's my key,' Ibid I 171; 'from low farms, / Poor pelting villages, sheep-cotes and mills,' II iii ll 17018 etc.
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10 King Lear II iv 1226. Elsewhere Lear is fascinated with thunder: 'First let me talk with this philosopher. / What is the cause of thunder?' (III, iv ll 153-54). We are reminded, as well, of the prevalence of the thunderbird in Amerindian totemic culture
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11 ANON 'A deep-freeze Lear in Eskimo Land, 'Spotlight Notes' Life 17 November 1961, p 198
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12 DON MACKAY "'King Lear" by Canadian Players' The Guardian (Guelph, Ontario) 4 December 1961, p 4: 'Those stocks should not have looked as though borrowed from some quiet English village green. They should have been as grisely [sic] as the barren North. In a country associated with traps of many kinds these were tame. One would suggest a cage fashioned from the hideous skeleton of an Arctic whale, or thongs contracting in the bitter cold air, or ice itself - a torture used by the Chinese in Korea.'
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13 Ibid 'Mr. Whittaker's "'nothingness" could be a world left void after the civility of civilization had been swept away in an act of nuclear cauterization'
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14 ROSE MACDONALD 'William Hutt as King Lear: a touching Noble Performance', The Toronto Telegram 25 October 1961
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15 MACKAY op cit
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16 CY WAINSCOTT 'Fine "King Lear" fires enthusiasm' The Ashland (Ohio) Times Gazette 1 November 1961
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17 J. BURKE MARTIN 'Hutt Scores Ace Playing King in Lear Tragedy' The London (Ontario) Free Press 21 October 1961
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18 MIRANDA DAVIES 'Canadian Players present eskimo version of Lear', The Varsity (University of Toronto) 27 October 1961
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19 WAINSCOTT op cit
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20 WENDY MICHENER 'odd Clash of Style In Eskimo "Lear"' The Toronto Star 25 October 1961
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21 MACKAY op cit
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22 MARTIN op cit
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23 MACKAY
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24 DAVIES
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25 CHARLES WILKINSON 'Canadian Players Superb: King Lear is Magnificent Theatre' The Hamilton Spectator 27 November 1961
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26 DAVIES op cit
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27 MICHENER op cit
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28 MACKAY op cit
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29 Ibid
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30 WILKINSON op cit
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31 HERBERT WHITTAKER 'Showbusiness' Globe and Mail (nd) December 1961
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32 D'ORSAY PEARSON '"King Lear" Entrances Despite Setting Change' Canton (Ohio) Repository 2 November 1961
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33 MICHAEL PILLEY 'Advice to Lovers of Theatre: See "King Lear",' Albany, New York Times-Union 6 December 1961
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34 WAINSCOTT op cit
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35 BERNARD P. LYONS 'Effective Performances of "King Lear": Stratford Company Does Well By Bard' Port Huron Times Herald (Michigan) 14 January 1962
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36 WILKINSON op cit
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37 MACDONALD op cit
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38 ALBERTA GREICUS '"Lear" Play 'Compelling, True to Life' Muncie Star (Indiana) 31 October 1961
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39 RALPH HICKLIN The Globe and Mail 24 October 1962
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40 MICHENER op cit
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41 PILLEY op cit
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42 DAVIES op cit
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43 WILKINSON op cit
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44 LYONS op cit
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45 PILLEY op cit
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46 MACDONALD op cit
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47 MACKAY op cit
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48 MARTIN op cit
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49 HICKLIN op cit
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50 DAVIES op cit
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51 MARTIN op cit
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52 MICHENER op cit
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53 HICKLIN op cit
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54 MACDONALD op cit
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55 DAVIES op cit
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56 GREICUS op cit
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57 PEARSON op cit
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58 WAINSCOTT op cit
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59 ANON 'A deep-freeze Lear in Eskimo land' Life 17 November 1961 p 198
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60 WILKINSON op cit
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61 ANONYMOUS 'Arts and Letters: On the Road' Time 3 November 1961 p 14
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62 MACKAY op cit
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63 Ibid
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64 PILLEY op cit
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65 MARGARET ALLISON 'With "King Lear" - Canadian Players Score Hit' Bay City Times (Michigan) 13 January 1962
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66 MARTIN op cit
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67 Mr Whittaker was also obliged to design the ramp to serve as part of the setting for The Lady's Not For Burning, the production which alternated with Lear on the tour
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68 MICHENER op cit
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