'George III': Mad to the Bone

Alan Bennett's play The Madness of George III opened last Friday at the Loeb Mainstage, in front of an audience eager if not for serious dramatic performance, then at least for a memorable show. The production did not disappoint the auteurs of either. Director Fred Hood managed a large and excellent cast almost as well as he did the mainstage, fulfilling his promise of "total theater." The Madness of George III was planned in the grandiose style of a Shakespearean production; it achieved this aim almost too well, with the result that it had some trouble retaining the delicate balance of humor and pathos that gives Bennett's play its special flavor. This story of a king whose reason slips away, whose Establishment wishes him gone and whose sons plot against him could make the material for a solemn biopic. Yet even the most dramatic moments in Bennett's play are punctuated with laughs and a tongue-in-cheek manner. The recreation of this difficult symbiosis between tragedy and farce was all the harder as the play's director brought a completely different agenda to this production.

Fred Hood directed The Madness of George III with the intent of conveying an "aesthetic experience." The cast served this end with an amazing stage presence, recreating the idiosynchratic characters of a period piece, flavored with a few well-picked dramatic allusions. Prime Minister Pitt, for example, was molded on the republican ideal and carried the air of a sad and lonely Robespierre. Christopher Sahm's Prince of Wales and Adam Kline's Duke of York brought a tinge of Oscar Wilde to this Georgian stage. The three incompetent medical men who try to find the key to the king's madness in his stool or his pulse introduce a hint of farce. In the end, all these divergent threads are pulled together by a rigidly orchestrated stage movement. The play gave the impression of a choreographed piece, with the actors preserving an impressive consistency of movement and gestures, In this context, Fred Hood's vision of the king as the least puppet-like of his entourage came out with splendid irony. This strategy seemed a fortunate one especially in the light of the comedic ability of the lead actor, Cary McLelland. McLelland's performance enriches King George's part in this historical drama with much-needed warmth and humor. Even in his madness, McLelland's George appeared as a big-hearted human being, his lunatic lapses inspire pity, his large, loud, brassy self is lovable, his foibles and struggles humanize him. McLelland is adept at the part of a king who projects a ferocious faade and then peeks out from behind it, winking. Typical of this rapprochement between king and audience is the reception of George's little verbal tics like "what-what" and "yesyes." These tics, which come to represent the coarse streak in George's nature, draw little sympathy from the public in the play's first act, but become popular towards the end as signs of the king's recovered sanity. The fact that McLelland's character defeats madness with eccentricity seems in the end to be the least of worries at the English court. To his entourage, it is not the form of his sanity but the means by which this sanity is attained that appears questionable.

The person that saves the king-a man named Willis, former priest and amateur physician-does so by shocking him into sanity, by breaking him up so he can be built up again. Willis character demands a mixture of sternness and doting which unfortunately evades title actor Alexis Burgess. The error is on the side of severity, as Burgess's Willis breaks George through boot camp discipline combined with asylum methods. His role in the production is not that of foil for the king's will, but, at best, of disciplinarian. Burgess's Willis is a tool to hammer reason back in George's head, an unsympathetic character who completes the range of the play's spectrum at the black-and-white end.

The production's aesthetic line is strictly followed with regard to sound, light and set design. The stage's austerity fits the well-known frugality of the historical George III. Interestingly, the sets seemed to be inspired by French republican and restoration art, rather than by the Georgian tastes of early 19th century Britain. In consonance, the confrontation between Pitt and Fox in parliament was staged in the fashion of an Assemble Nationale, with the two leaders held by spotlights in the center of mural-size doors. Costumes and make-up accentuate the distinction between a humanized George III and his puppet-like court. While most actors are fittingly powdered, wigged and decked up in period costumes, the king is shown alternatively in a nightgown or a straightjacket, with hair awry. The image of the mad king is an obvious echo of King Lear; the analogy between the two scenarios being played up in this production. In dcor, effects and characterization, Hood manages to convey his vision of Bennett's play as a story as epic and dramatically versatile as King Lear, but twice the fun."

In the interst of objectivity, this review was edited by Arts Executive Editor, Christina Rosenberger.