Nashville Shakespeare Fest Denice Hicks on King Lear

On Wednesday, March 25, at 7:00 p.m. on NPT, in GREAT PERFORMANCES’ “King Lear,” Ian McKellen gives a tour-de-force performance as Shakespeare’s tragic titular monarch in this special television adaptation of the Royal Shakespeare Company. The telecast, co-directed by Sir Trevor Nunn and Chris Hunt, marks Ian McKellen’s return to the RSC after a 17-year hiatus.

King Lear is widely considered one of Shakespeare’s most enduring and haunting works for the stage. The challenge of playing its title role has been taken on by some of the greatest actors of our time — Orson Welles, Sir Laurence Olivier, Sir John Gielgud, Sir Ian Holm and James Earl Jones, to name only a few. This new broadcast of GREAT PERFORMANCES “King Lear” got us wondering just what it is about this particular play that continually attracts top talent, big audiences and new productions. So we tracked down Denice Hicks, artistic director for The Nashville Shakespeare Festival, to get her thoughts.

What moves me most about this play is the ultimate humanity that it reveals. The very first time I saw it performed, I was in my early twenties. By the end, my T-shirt was soaked with tears. It’s not that I understood every word that was said — to this day it takes me several hearings before I can really appreciate most of the language in Shakespeare’s works — but that the beauty of the story, combined with the power of the message, is soul shaking. This play tells me that there is nothing more important than family. Seeing the breath of your child, serving the basic needs of your parent are the moments that make life worth living.

The story is written on a huge scale with the highest stakes imaginable and the most desperate situations possible, but what makes it hit home is that it is actually a domestic drama. Sure, King Lear is a “once upon a time King,” and as with any very important person, we tend to see him for what he does, not who he truly is.

In the first scene we see “King Lear” doing what Kings do — bossing people around, flaunting his power, sending people to exile and possibly death. His hubris causes him to disown his youngest, most faithful daughter and put his trust in his two elder, devious daughters. The play could have been a simple morality tale, but with Shakespeare at the quill Lear is more than just a two-dimensional “King.” He’s also an aging parent dealing with contradictory, deceptive adult children and his own declining body and deteriorating mind. All around him are colorful characters that interact in unexpected and intriguing ways, rivaling even the most sordid of tabloid stories. Thus, the master poet and playwright set the scene for his masterpiece tragedy.

In this play are acts of unimaginable cruelty and astounding kindness, unforgivable betrayal and sacrificial loyalty. There is silliness and irony and through them all Shakespeare holds a mirror up to nature, magnifying it many times for our sensibilities, to reflect for us our intimate humanity in all its glorious and fascinating variations. Shakespeare creates amazingly intricate characters in “Lear,” and through them we see the human fragility that connects every one of us.

Hicks has been working for The Nashville Shakespeare Festival since 1990, and has held the position of Artistic Director from 1998-2002 and since 2005. She is currently working on Shakespeare’s Case, an educational program developed by The Nashville Shakespeare Festival exploring The Bard’s relevance, which she co-wrote with Nan Gurley and director Claire Syler. It makes its World Premiere on May 29 at the Troutt Theater at Belmont University. For more info, visit nashvilleshakes.org.