Songs of Lear

Polish company Song of the Goat is renowned for pulling theatre apart at the seams and fearlessly reassembling its components in new and exciting ways. This year, the company's ongoing research project takes a massive stride forward with Songs of Lear, an experimental triumph that sees them using choral song to retell Shakespeare’s King Lear.

The idea behind Songs of Lear, shaven-headed Company Director Grzegorz Bral explains early on, is to see Lear as a painting where the music represents the paint, where the songs conjure vivid pictures and where vocal harmony can invoke the rhythm of tragedy. Each of the 10 choral pieces that follow represent small but perfectly formed jigsaw pieces in the Lear plot: the summoning of Lear’s harmonious kingdom; the king’s painful estrangement from Cordelia; and his eventul spiralling descent into madness. After each recital the agitated Bral jumps from his seat and strides centre stage to interject, imparting pivotal nuggets of context and narration like a professor lecturing to students.

It is a powerful, arresting approach to theatrical storytelling and it perfectly adumbrates the complexity of Lear. Yet the performance’s formidable power resides largely in the intensity of the music itself. The 10-strong choir possess remarkable vocal dexterity, and their harmonies expertly manoeuvre the audience through the contours of Cordelia’s weeping lament before building to a frightening crescendo, as Lear’s kingdom dissolves into ruin. Innovative, ambitious and expertly realised, this is majestic theatre that will reverberate inside you long after the last song.