King Lear : Nothing Like Lear by Rajat Kapoor

Kahaniyaan presents The Great Indian Theatre Festival, featuring Vinay Pathak, Ranvir Shorey, Rajat Kapoor & others. King Lear is widely regarded as Shakespeare’s crowning artistic achievement. Vinay Pathak’s solo performance as Lear exceeds his acting prowess & is breath-taking at times.

"I am a king, my masters, know you that?"

Lear, the aging king of Britain, decides to step down from the throne and divide his kingdom evenly among his three daughters. First, however, he puts his daughters through a test, asking each to tell him how much she loves him. Goneril and Regan, Lear’s older daughters, give their father flattering answers. But Cordelia, Lear’s youngest and favorite daughter, remains silent, saying that she has no words to describe how much she loves her father. Lear flies into a rage and disowns Cordelia. The king of France, who has courted Cordelia, says that he still wants to marry her even without her land, and she accompanies him to France without her father’s blessing.

Lear quickly learns that he made a bad decision. Goneril and Regan swiftly begin to undermine the little authority that Lear still holds. Unable to believe that his beloved daughters are betraying him, Lear slowly goes insane. He flees his daughters’ houses to wander on a heath during a great thunderstorm, accompanied by his Fool and by Kent, a loyal nobleman in disguise.

"How nothing will come out of nothing."

When Cordelia tells Lear that she can say ‘nothing’ about her love for her father, this line is Lear’s response, the line reverberates throughout the play. Lear essentially repeats when he tells the Fool that “nothing can be made out of nothing”. These repetitions reflect King Lear’s obsession with absences and loss, which prepares the audience for a play that begins with an impulsive, senseless act and ends with no meaning, no hope, and no redemption for its characters.

“Who is it that can tell me who I am?”

Audiences are pulled into the story as they become the then citizens of ancient Britain, and witness the tragic hero, his three flaws, his arrogance, his ignorance, and his misjudgments. G.B. Shaw once wrote, “No man will ever write a better tragedy than Lear”.