In performance, the earnest Newman is just this side of hitting the mark. Welcoming us into Lear's home for an hour of conversation, he's hovering close around the idea of a person who (at this point, anyway) hasn't yet coalesced into a solid whole. His Lear is an old man -- perhaps too old for the actor -- who is alternately jaunty and reflective and little of anything in between. Without an even keel from which to balance your perceptions, everything feels a bit fuzzy. Ellen Graham's direction doesn't give him anything, either; there's a tendency toward illustrative acting, dramatizing words with superfluous gesture.
Even the show's skilled design elements aren't completely fleshed out. Aaron Rasmussen's sound design gives us nicely corresponding aural cues -- echoes of a seaside, of India, of the opera -- that come in and out without any real heft, as if there were an uncertainty as to their artistic merit. Iggy Neral's set is well made but barren, and doesn't give Newman enough to do.
In the end, Lear's poems and reflections need to be hung on something grander than Newman's studious research. There is so much information that Newman and Graham get distracted by Lear's travelogue, and fail to construct an overriding conceit that would tell us exactly what to bring away from the evening. They make too much of some things and not enough of others. Wandering around somewhere inside Stuff and Nonsense are intriguing hints of sadness, loneliness, and a lingering regret that need to be brought forward for a proper introduction.
