October 2009<\/p>\n
John Gaden, back in Adelaide for State Theatre Company\u2019s latest production, talks to Murray Bramwell about playing King Lear \u2013 for a third time.<\/p>\n
John Gaden is, and has always been, one of Adelaide\u2019s favourite actors. He performed at Theatre 62 in the late 60s, headlined often for the South Australian Theatre Company in its early years, and as Artistic Director from 1986 to 1989, he not only pulled the State Theatre Company out of the cactus, but established one of the most admired and popular programs in the company\u2019s history. In tandem with Gale Edwards , Gaden staged plenty of Shakespeare \u2013 Much Ado, The Tempest, A Winter\u2019s Tale and in 1988, leading from the front, a production of King Lear.<\/p>\n
Now he\u2019s back again, following on from a highly successful \u201cyear of the Bard\u201d as he puts it – two seasons of Pericles with the Bell Company and an array of roles, including Falstaff (\u201csans padding\u201d) in Benedict Andrews\u2019s acclaimed eight hour marathon, The War of the Roses at the Sydney Theatre Company. Over coffee at the Festival Centre just before the day\u2019s rehearsal begins, John Gaden is his familiar sharp self \u2013 engaged, genial and, as he delves into the play like a kingfisher on a pond, brilliantly lucid about his text. <\/p>\n
I asked him first how the project came up.<\/p>\n
\u201cAdam Cook approached me nearly two years ago. He wanted to do Lear for this season and was I interested? He had wanted to do the play for a long time and also thought I had a connection of some kind. I thought \u2018well, I\u2019d love to.\u2019 It\u2019s one of those roles you can never get completely right, I think. So to have another go when I am closer to the designated age \u2026 it\u2019s twelve years off. Lear says he is \u2018fourscore and upward, not an hour more nor less \u2018 -which is an odd expression.\u201d <\/p>\n
Gaden has played Lear twice before – for Theatre 62 in 1967, in 1988 when he was 47 and now, in another 21 year increment, in 2009. He has avoided contact with other productions, he says. \u201cI\u2019ve never seen the film versions- the Brook, the Olivier, the Ian Holm.\u201d Returning to the role, he says he doesn\u2019t recognize himself. I ask if that is disconcerting, but he only laughs.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you come back to it you think- \u2018 ah, I see what that\u2019s about\u2019 and you see it, not in an intellectual way, but an emotional way. For instance, when Lear talks about the mind \u2018casting adrift\u2019. When I was 50, my mind was not casting adrift, it was quite together, so I had to somehow intellectualize all that \u2013 but now my mind frequently casts adrift. I am sure that\u2019s one of the great fears in the play \u2013 of the mind going into that great big nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n
He talks about the rigours of the role, of the savagery of Lear towards Cordelia in the \u201cserpent\u2019s tooth\u201d speech (\u201cI find it very hard to do that one\u201d) and the turbulence in the character. \u201cThere is clearly rage and it is a huge driving force, and obsession fuels it and then overturns the mind. I think the play is more about the fear of madness than madness itself. As his wits begin to turn he is constantly asking \u2018what\u2019s happening to me ?\u2019 It\u2019s one of the things that makes it terrifying to play \u2013 it\u2019s tough ! \u201c <\/p>\n
King Lear, directed by Adam Cook and designed by Victoria Lamb, opens in the Dunstan Playhouse on October 31.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
October 2009 John Gaden, back in Adelaide for State Theatre Company\u2019s latest production, talks to Murray Bramwell about playing King Lear \u2013 for a third time. John Gaden is, and has always been, one of Adelaide\u2019s favourite actors. He performed at Theatre 62 in the late 60s, headlined often for the South Australian Theatre Company in its early years, and as Artistic Director from 1986 to 1989, he not only pulled the State Theatre Company out of the cactus, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive","category-interviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1637"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1638,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1637\/revisions\/1638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}