Bell Shakespeare is staging its first production of the Bard’s classic play “King Lear” in 13 years, as part of its 2024 season, reports LIZ HOBDAY. 

BEFORE there was Logan Roy on streaming devices, there was King Lear on stage.

Bell Shakespeare is staging the Bard’s 400-year-old play for the first time in 13 years as part of its 2024 season.

The production, starring acclaimed actor Robert Menzies, may even be part of a global moment for “Lear”, with Kenneth Branagh set to star in London and New York stage productions, and reports that Al Pacino is working on a film adaptation.

Bell Shakespeare’s artistic director Peter Evans says “King Lear” is the original “Succession”, with Lear, the king of Britain, deciding to abdicate and divide up his kingdom between his daughters Goneril, Regan and Cordelia.

The first two profess their love in florid terms, but Cordelia, his favourite, cannot.

“How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is/To have a thankless child!” says Act One, Scene Four. Indeed.

Succession – the concept, not the streaming series – was a lifelong fascination for Shakespeare, said Evans, who rates it in the Bard’s top three obsessions.

Several of his plays from the late 1500s rest on the idea of who will inherit what, but “King Lear” was written almost two decades later about the death of Queen Elizabeth I, who had no children.

“It was a real issue,” Evans said.

“Part of the national anxiety was about succession and what it may mean – and so it appears throughout the plays.”

Bell Shakespeare last staged “King Lear” in 2010 for the company’s 20th anniversary, so why the long wait before returning to one of the Bard’s best-known texts?

Evans said he was waiting for the right venue and the right actor, but plans for the company’s new digs at Sydney’s Walsh Bay arts precinct took years to come to fruition.

Now that the company has finally moved to Pier 2/3 it can use the Neilson Nutshell, a versatile space suited to minimalist staging.

Australian versions of “King Lear” have almost always been epic productions in big theatres, but Evans wants to use the Neilson to do the play in a different and more intimate way. As a result, the 2024 “Lear” will be in the round, with the audience on all four sides.

Evans said the intimate space – with the audience just metres from the actors – rewards simplicity and stripped-back productions, and makes the text and actors the focus, rather than an elaborate set or costumes.

To Evans’ knowledge the play hasn’t been staged like this before, but he says it is arguably more similar to the theatres Shakespeare was writing for, than most contemporary productions.

Having a permanent home at Walsh Bay is a big development for Bell Shakespeare, which started out performing in a tent.

Yet plays in the Nutshell will only make up about a third of the company’s program – it will still spend much of its time touring Australia.

A 2024 production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” will play in 23 venues across NSW, WA, Victoria and the ACT, completing a national tour that was interrupted by covid border closures.

To round out the season, there is an exploration of Shakespeare’s depictions of violence with “In A Nutshell: The Poetry of Violence”.

Evans will narrate, taking a crack team of actors each playing a dozen parts through key scenes and speeches, from “Macbeth” to “Much Ado About Nothing”, “Romeo and Juliet” to “Richard III”.

Bell Shakespeare’s 2024 season opens with “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at the Sydney Opera House, March 6-30.

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