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In presenting a play in which the boundaries between good and bad, dark and light, were often blurred, Gregory Doran's King Lear achieved a degree of realism in the moral universe that it created. By pulling the audience's sympathies back and forth between each side of the play's conflicts, the production created a situation not of complete moral relativism, but one in which tragedy ultimately lay on both sides. Nearly everyone who had any substantial presence in the play had at different times claims to sympathy and derision. It was not a play so much of stark contrasts but of gradation and fine distinction.
The production opened to a dark, minimalist set. Several black mounds covered the stage, turning out to be people who rose and fled as the play began with the arrival of the named characters, perhaps representative of commoners who were otherwise absent in this aristocratic drama. In the opening scene in which Lear divided his kingdom, the only adornments on the stage were large metal discs held aloft on tall poles. The effect of all of this dark and metal was both regal and somber, foreshadowing the tragic direction the play would quickly take. Indeed, the only light in the entire play was the white costuming of Cordelia (and eventually Lear and Gloucester). Cordelia's white bridal dress stood in contrast to the costuming of the other characters, clad in luxurious dark costumes with rich embroidery, and even to the actor's own skin. Yet despite setting out such a clear black/white binary in the costume choices, the production went...