King Lear at Stratford Festival
Dion Johnstone's take on Edmund and Brian Bedford
King Lear's Edmund, like many in today's world, was a child ignored and slighted. Brian Bedford's direction gave Dion Johnstone wise tools to play The Bastard Son.
In Part Two, Dion Johnstone chats about his motivation for the character of Edmund and director Brian Bedford's innovative work process.
Has Edmund evolved because you have been doing this for a while?
"I would say the evolution in Edmund for me has become more and more fun. At first it was huge technical challenge to play because he is such a smart character and such a fast thinker and it was very easy to let the thoughts get away from me. There was a fine balance because he has a lot of passion and a lot of drive and a lot of charisma behind him. Another direction Brian (Bedford) had given me was the more cold that you can make Edmund, the more reptilian that you make him, the better it is going to be.
Anger, rage and passion; he experienced that in one point of his life, but if you make him too angry he becomes less attractive. This is a guy who had a very cool face because he knows he is smarter and he knows he is better than everybody. If I can approach Edmund from that way, then it becomes more scary. That’s been the balance that I have been working on in the season. Now it’s becoming fun. At one moment I will be playing to my brother (Edgar/Gareth Potter), then to my father (Gloucester/Scott Wentworth), and then playing to the audience."
You and the Earl of Cornwall (Wayne Best)... that’s some alliance.
"Edmund inadvertently is able to use the arrival of Cornwall and Regan to get rid of his brother. and that begins the alliance with Cornwall. Then, later Edmund realizes he can have his brother’s lands, and his father’s title and the lands right now if he gets rid of him and so Edmund betrays his father to Cornwall, which cements the alliance. Then in the act of Cornwall punishing Edmund’s father by taking out his eyes, Cornwall is killed and Edmund thinks, ‘Great, I am able to slide right in there and be with Regan.’ She needs a man, someone to defend her lands and titles."
What was it like working with Brian Bedford and the cast?
"That was amazing. Brian has taken so much care working with each of the actors, to build the show to exactly the way he wanted it to be, and also to give us all the hooks that we would need to carry on to get us through the season. He spent more time building us up to where we needed to be before he began fully investing himself in King Lear.
He had this fascinating process of working with his understudy John Innes side by side so that he could sit out for a scene and watch the scene and give notes on that, then for the next scene step in as Lear, so we could work with him on that. It went back and forth and back and forth so by the time we raised the play to the point where we were able to start running it, Brian would sit out for a full act.
John would play Lear and Brian would take notes on that and then he would go in for the second act and we would play that with him. We would work on notes that we got from the last time we worked that cycle. Finally when we were at the stage of dress rehearsals, then Brian stepped in fully as King Lear. There has only been one performance, our final preview when we opened where Brian went out of the show because of an injury."
That was his back wasn’t it?
"Yes, we were fully prepared with John Innes through the entire rehearsal process.Though their rhythms and their Lears were very different, we had built it as a company with both so the show didn’t suffer at all, and it is a monumental part to imagine an understudy just jumping and doing Lear."
One thing I did notice; the supporting cast was very strong.
"It’s been a fantastic journey, one of those shows that the more we do it, the more it deepens. It’s like a big stew in a way. You start with all of these plotlines and all of these agendas, and all of this pain that is inherent in that world especially when a king abdicates and throws everything into disorder. The more time that we’ve had to run it, the more those juices seem to deepen and develop and grow."
Part Three - Dion Johnstone talks about the role of Tom Robinson in To Kill a Mockingbird, playing at The Stratford Festival to October 27, 2007. For more info on the works of Shakespeare, check out Jem Bloomfield at Suite 101's Shakespeare page.
