‘Lear’ speaks from heart

The alchemy by which a Shakespearean actor transforms dialogue into character is a fascinating one. It’s not simply a matter of eloquently reciting lines with a knowledge of their meaning. (If that were all it took, English professors would immediately form a repertory company and rack up all the awards.) The challenge lies in converting words into the expression of personalized thought and feeling.

Robert Mandan offers a majestic example as King Lear in Tier 4 Company’s debut production, an uneven but nonetheless emotionally potent rendering of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy that opened last Friday at the Electric Lodge in Venice. When he speaks, you not only register what his character is saying but also sense the pressurized internal place pounding out the utterance.

The standard interpretation -- of a doddering, tantrum-prone monarch forced to discover the divinity that resides in his humble “unaccommodated” humanity -- is reinvigorated by the gruff, irascible presence that Mandan presents in as unsweetened a manner as possible.

Wily veteran. By courageously risking our antipathy in the first half, he succeeds all the more in breaking our hearts when the frail, beaten-down man is revealed underneath the tyrant in the second.

Mandan’s conviction in the moment-to-moment life of his character is unwavering, but there’s something devastating about his handling of Lear’s indignation at the death of his daughter Cordelia. Each syllable of the famous “Never, never, never, never, never” lament records his outrage at her never drawing breath again, the paternal sorrow rumbling deep from a body that hasn’t much breath left itself.

Understandably, none of the members of Patsy Rodenburg’s ensemble can match this level. Though this is a remarkably articulate staging (everyone seems to have benefited from her expertise as voice director of London’s National Theatre), the tissue of connections between characters sometimes gets lost in the spray of poetry (which at its worst comes off as rhetoric).

Part of the problem is the direction. Rodenburg’s admirable impulse is to strip the experience to the actor and the text. Tired of glitzy postmodern shenanigans, she serves up a modern-dress Shakespeare on a barren narrow stage, with the focus tending to fall on two verbal combatants squaring off.

Given the cramped conditions and theatrical emphasis on language, movement is necessarily constricted. But for this style to work, Rodenburg would need a cast of Gielguds who could move mountains simply by moving their mouths. That’s asking a bit much, especially from the less seasoned actors, who are groping to find the distinctive voices of their characters.

Patrick Muldoon’s Edmund seems less like a nefarious schemer masking long-standing grudges than a vacant-headed delinquent who could probably be reformed with a little tough love from his father, Gloucester (Lawrence Pressman in fine form).

Omar Metwally has a delicacy of appearance and manner that lends nobility to Edgar if not exactly the sturdy command to contend with all that’s thrown at him by his evil brother. Mili Avital’s Cordelia radiates the moral goodness of a storybook saint -- an old-school approach that explains the modern tendency to perform the role with a pert, passive-aggressive reticence.

As the fool, Diane Venora (an old Shakespearean hand who’s the most physical of all the performers) works her gags too strenuously -- she’s like a vaudevillian desperate to get a rise with material she doesn’t completely trust.

Of the bad daughters, Jayne Brook’s Goneril is the one who illuminates the pained legacy of being an unfavorite child, no doubt subjected from an early age to capricious parental wrath. When she vies with her sister Regan (Tyne Rafaeli) for Edmund’s bed, it’s possible to imagine Goneril as a young girl stooping to real violence when her best toy is threatened.

All told, the production marks a promising beginning for the Tier 4 Company. But it’s Mandan’s Lear who makes the harrowing pathos worth revisiting.

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‘King Lear’

Where: Electric Lodge, 1416 Electric Ave., Venice

When: 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays

Ends: Sept. 3

Price: $27

Contact: (800) 838-3006 or tier4company.com

Running time: Three hours