King Lear / Jones, New York Shakespeare Festival (Broadway Theatre Archive)

Starring:John R. Tobinski, Robert Stattel, Anthony Chisholm, Rosalind Cash, Jose Machado, James West III, George Addison, Frederick Coffin, Lou Quinones, James Harper, Gregory Mosher, Charles Pegues, Kevin Maung, Paul Sorvino, Ellen Holly, John Salat, James Earl Jones, Douglass Watson, Rene Auberjonois, William Hart
Director: Edwin Sherin
Studio: Image Entertainment
Product Type: DVD

Amazon.com

Brilliant performances from an amazing cast highlight this piece of modern theater history. James Earl Jones stars as Lear in this digitally remastered recording of a live performance in the park. (If you've ever wished you could see one of Joseph Papp's legendary New York Shakespeare Festival productions, this is your chance.) The crowd reactions add a layer to the play by helping to bring the excellent production to life. The direction is vibrant, keeping both a reverence for Shakespeare's work and the importance of entertaining a crowd in mind. The astonishing supporting cast includes Rosalind Cash, Paul Sorvino, Rene Auberjonois, and Raul Julia, and a remarkable performance by Douglass Watson as Kent. --Ali Davis

Description

The formidable James Earl Jones reprises his critically-acclaimed King Lear in this television adaptation of Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival production. Of Jones's performance, The Washington Post wrote, "Jones has the qualities of mind, body, voice and movement which enable him to make us care deeply about the spectacle of an old man brought to grief by his folly. The magnitude Jones project is not a matter of mere physical size, but of largeness of soul."

Customer Reviews:

"As Good As It Gets".......2007-04-11

The earlier reviewers here are certainly on target in calling this the finest "King Lear" on DVD. While the supporting cast is never less than adequate, James Earl Jones is by himself one titanic show. He's able to do something rarely seen, excel in all aspects of this most demanding of roles. Pride, bluster, anger, genuine rage, madness, growing self knowledge, and then, at last, tenderness, even delicacy - all of these are convincingly and movingly played by this large, majestic actor. He's giving what add up, in fact, to acting lessons as he plays this part so skillfully.

Bravo for James Earl Jones and for Joe Papp.......2007-02-19

I agree completely with all of the reviewers that this is indeed the best recording of "King Lear", not only because James Earl Jones is to my mind the definitive Lear (and because this cast and production magnify and clarify everything there is to be seen and heard in this play), but also because it is a recording of a live performance in a theater, rather than a movie or TV-studio taping. What a difference this makes! Movie versions are always rescripted, truncated and sometimes oddly cast to make a play more saleable. (Orson Welles' "Othello" and "Macbeth" are gorgeous pieces of cinema, but they are much more Welles than Will.) The productions of the 1980s BBC series stick pretty close to the text and happily have made the entire Shakespeare canon available for home viewing. But their visual and aural effect is claustrophobic, and the colors are fading. It was a wonderful change for me to experience the sweep and power of Papp's "King Lear" DVD, proving that, in the end, the best venue for a Shakespeare play is the one it was written for: the stage. Fortunately for those of us who could not be at Central Park's Delacorte Theater in the summer of 1974, Joseph Papp had the historical sense to take on the hassle and expense of preserving this marvelous production on videotape. Would that there were enough of a market out there to encourage more theater angels to do the same!

OF ALL THE KING LEAR'S THIS IS THE ABSOLUTE BEST RECORDED.......2006-08-11

and that includes Ran.

In order of preference from my personal library:

This Joe Papp/ James Earle JOnes production is tops
then the early Peter Brooks/ Orson Welles tremendous adaptation
THen Olivier's gentler production (Olivier's best recorded Shakespeare)
THen the 1970's cardboard BBC production
THen the Ian Holms version

This James Earle Jones presentation is the best of all, despite a few technical flaws of miking and camera angle (I cringe that they have no footage of his final "Howl, howl, howl, howl; Oh! Ye be men of stone" entry- the greatest line in the play yet we see him not!)

Any other complaints here recorded - including hair style! are irrelevant and trivial. In any way this is the best production you can get of this intense play. Okay, well, Sorvino could have had a better wig and fake beard, and a stronger voice as an opera singer (which stands him in good stead during the eye-outing) but remember the actors were playing more to the enormous CEntral PArk audience than to the cameras. For this reason alone the subtlety of their presentation is especially remarkable, even if broad stage blocking is required, and minimal sets. THIS IS A LIVE PRESENTATION and makes you recall how great our world class theatre ONCE was.

Please do remember this is a live production. It is great to see Mr. Jones practicing lines while dressing during the miserable Hal Holbrook introduction. This is LIVE THEATRE, yet Mr. JOnes carries his lines tremendously. There is no memorizing lines scene by scene like for a movie. He had hundreds of lines to remember, and he makes each word TRUE and real and meaningful as no other actor does despite all sorts of grimacing. This is the younger Jones, long before becoming the voice of CNN, etc. He is a force of nature and of spirit and of soul and of INTELLECT such as Welles and such as we shall never again see.

It is a great production as well for the young and vibrant Raul Julia and REne D'Aubojoinois (SPELLING?) as the half-brother sons of Edmund. Incredible acting by both whose bright light outshines ANYTHING in their later very fine television and cinema opus. TO see Julia as a passionate male lead rather than world weary of as Mr. Addams is amazing.

All in all a great interpretation and a faithful presentation of this complex play. Get it. Compare it to the others, and watch which one you reach for when in a King Lear kind of a mood.

kindly overlook my limited superlatives and get this production.

The Best I've Seen.......2006-04-28

"Lear" is not an easy play to watch by any standard, or in any medium. Anyone who has ever wished that he or she had more money or property to leave to his or her children would do well to watch this one. Poor families get along better, believe me.

In a nutshell: An old king creates the worst living trust plan of all time (this was before estate planning attorneys). In a fit of fatigued grandiosity, he divests himself of his kingdom, disinherits his loyal daughter and entrusts himself to the care of his two greedy, grasping daughters. It's all downhill from there, with a "B" plot which also follows the theme of fillial vs. unfilial adult children. At the end, of course, there is a pile of bodies and a few stunned survivors.

What makes this Lear so special is the cast and the audience. It was filmed in front of a live New York audience, and so you can hear the audience laughing at the jokes and applauding a particuarly good speech. This gives the production a sense of immediacy.

In some ways, this production is sort of like watching an all-star baseball game - the players are so good, and it's a real treat to watch them. A very young and sexy Raoul Julia plays Edmund - the seductive bad guy, and you can really see how Lear's two wicked daughters would get into a cat fight over him. And as Edmund's good half-brother Edgar, Rene Auberjonois is wonderful. Edgar has to go from naif to feigned insanity to righteous warrior - quite a character arc, and Auberjonois does a fabulous job.

An unexpected favorite, though, is an actor I've never seen in anything else - Douglass Watson as the Earl of Kent. Kent is a loyal supporter of the King who risks death to follow Lear through all his trials and tribulations. I've always loved Kent for his loyalty - heck, I'd marry him if he wasn't fictional. This actor brings a tremendous amount of spirit and pepper to the part - I think it's the best Kent I've ever seen.

The female roles are generally quite well acted as well, although the actress who plays Regan (I think) has kind of an annoying squeaky voice - it sounds like she's swallowed helium. Too bad, as she's good in all other ways.

And what can you say about James Earl Jones? There isn't much I can add to the other reviews except to say that I would be very interested to see him do another production of this same play now, thirty years later. This Lear is quite physical, storming around the stage, frustrated by his own weakness - he can't even throw a chair in a fit of rage without falling down, but that doesn't stop him from trying. And Jones' voice is Jones' voice - is there anyone who wouldn't recognize his deep and mellow tones, even if only as Darth Vader? It is a wonderful treat to be able to hear Jones act this role. He brings a gravitas to the part which is necessary for it to be truly tragic. But then James Earl Jones can bring gravitas to a toilet paper commercial, that's why he's The Man.

All in all, of the many Lears I have endured, this is the strongest, and I wish there were more than five stars available.

Superb.......2005-11-21

This Movie gave me an actual reason to like shakespears writing and plays. There was superb acting by all the actor and actresses and mainly Mr. James Earl Jones. Just watching his anger and how it progressed through the play just gave a new meaning to acting, the way he used his facial expressions and when his saliva came pouring out of his mouth just showed how hard he worked to perfect his perfromance. As for the Director he could not have got a better cast. This is why i gave this mvie FOUR STARS

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