THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, November 4, 1995 TAG: 9511030049
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TERESA ANNAS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 102 lines
AT VIRGINIA Wesleyan College, ``King Lear'' - among the darkest of Shakespeare's tragedies - is seeing the light.
Under theater professor Rick Hite's direction, all house lights are up for ``Lear,'' on stage through Nov. 11 at Hofheimer Theater.
Hite has allowed for no special lighting effects, no spotlights, no colored gels. Just full illumination, imitating the daylit stage at Shakespeare's Globe Theater.
Both audience and actors will be on full view. While dapper dressers might be happy to be seen, nappers will be embarrassingly visible. Actors will also interact with the audience, he said.
``The audience is part of it. They should be aware of each other and of the play,'' said Hite, who portrays the egomaniacal monarch.
Lighting isn't the only provocative aspect of this post-modern ``Lear.''
Forget the usual Elizabethan staging and costume. The setting and dress are contemporary eclectic - blue blazers with broad-swords.
The stage is nearly bare, aside from a wingback chair that serves as the king's throne. Swords and daggers for fight scenes are piled in a garbage heap on stage.
``Purists will be very upset,'' said the director, unperturbed. ``This is a world in disarray.''
Instead of being merely mean, Hite's Lear is a drunk, whose alcohol-induced mood swings leave kith and kin reeling from the blows.
``To me, that makes more sense,'' Hite said. ``He's like those people who are very nice and pleasant. And then, after a certain drink - man, they turn 180 degrees.
"Lear'' is a tragedy for the 1990s, Hite said. As the play opens, Lear, the king of Britain, has decided to retire and divide his kingdom among his three daughters, contingent on their proclamations of love for him.
Two daughters, Goneril and Regan, speak excessively of their affection. A third, Cordelia, offers a simple but sincere expression of love, making the foolish king so angry that he banishes her.
Once Goneril and Regan possess Lear's territory, they strip him of power and turn him out in a storm. Slowly, Lear realizes his folly and goes mad.
``This is a play about family values,'' Hite said, laughing at the phrase, which is a hot issue in politics. ``It's about the relationship of parents to children. It's about ingratitude. It's about what we, as family members, owe each other. And it is so relevant to our times.''
These days, ``I am seeing the anger of the young in having to assume responsibility for the old,'' as in the issue of diminishing Social Security funds, Hite said.
The younger set in ``Lear'' has no conscience. From yuppie suburbs to struggling inner cities, that attitude is brutally modern: ``We want it now, and we don't care how we get it,'' the director said.
Also, as the millenium draws near, there is talk of apocalypse and major world changes, he noted. Likewise, ``Lear'' concerns ``a world in which the old order is collapsing, and there's not much of a new order to take its place.
Michael Hall, an English professor at Virginia Wesleyan who specializes in Shakespeare, sees ``Lear'' more as ``a tragedy of identity,'' he said.
``I think we all assume that identity itself is an interior quality based on concepts of honor, love, trust and so forth,'' Hall said.
In ``Lear,'' Shakespeare shows us how our identities really are based more on outside factors, primarily ``how people react to us,'' Hall said.
As Lear is stripped of territory, power, family and, finally, shelter, his world descends into ``an apocalyptic stage,'' Hall said, ``because this is a place where there is no firm identity.
``No one has a sense of identity. No one knows who they are. No one can look into another person and see a reflection of who they are.''
For Hite, portraying Lear while directing the huge production has been a mammoth task. Fortunately, he learned his 800 or so lines in the summer of 1994, when he played the title role for a Staunton production.
Also, in July and August, Hite spent six weeks in Harrisonburg gathering fresh performance ideas with Shenandoah Shakespeare Express (SSE), an innovative troupe associated with James Madison University. (On Dec. 1, SSE will perform the Bard's ``Twelfth Night'' at Virginia Wesleyan.)
Hite returned eager to produce more Shakespeare at Virginia Wesleyan, where he has taught since 1969. Now, Hite and Hall are making plans to team-teach beginning in the fall of 1997.
With casts consisting mostly of students and faculty of varying talents, a director could feel frustrated in mounting such challenging mate-rial.
So far with ``Lear,'' Hite said, ``there are places where the play sags, and there are some really good moments where it's really working.
``It's the learning experience that is important,'' he said.
The process has been enlightening for Hite, too. In developing his interpretation of the 80-year-old king, Hite, who is 56, took the opportunity to examine his own life.
``To think about who I am as a father, an animal, a human being.''
Playing such a larger-than-life character is ``exhilarating,'' said Hite, a veteran actor.
``When Lear is being ugly, I can let out my ugliness. When Lear is suffering pain and hurt, it's an incredibly rich experience to let that roar out of you.''
Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!< rage, blow!
``Wow - to yell at the heavens. To rant and rave,'' he said, savoring the notion. ``You just don't get to do that every day.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by Vicki Cronis, The Virginian-Pilot
Rick Hite...
by CNB