Holly Wiliams cues us up on what to expect from Dennis Kelly's take on the human cost of corporate power struggles.
Dennis Kelly doesn’t think his plays are dark. Audiences and critics don’t agree, perhaps unsuprisingly: Taking Care of Baby and DNA both deal with murdered children, while Osama The Hero sees a teenager getting hammered in the unpleasantly literal sense after writing a school paper supporting Osama Bin Laden. But this time, Kelly has taken his cues from a playwright who was no stranger to writing violence: Shakespeare.
In this RSC prodcution, The Gods Weep plays with the story of King Lear. But it wasn’t commissioned by the company, and Kelly actually came to Lear by a rather indirect route. He was inspired by Ran, Akira Kurosawa’s film adaptation of King Lear which re-sets the story in feudal Japan. Like Ran, The Gods Weep is about a powerful man at the end of his life, who is forced to confront his own brutality, and finds himself asking ‘what was the point?’ When the protagonist, Colm, divides up his business empire among his subordinates, he unleashes a vicious power struggle which forces him to question the human cost of his decisions.
The central role in this tale of corporate greed and ensuing violence is taken by Jeremy Irons. It’s his first RSC production since he played Leontes in The Winter’s Tale in the late '80s, and he’s likely to provide a bit of star pulling power for the show (oh, yeah – Kelly also wrote BBC sitcom Pulling).
An epic production, The Gods Weep has a three-act structure, with each act taking place in slightly different worlds, almost functioning as stand-alone plays. It shows an increase in scale and ambition for Kelly, although it seems likely that the darkness will endure: even by his standards, he admits some of the characters are fairly cruel. You have been warned.
The Gods Weep runs at Hampstead Theatre from 15th March until 3rd April
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