By William Shakespeare. Directed by Dennis Garnhum. A Bard on the Beach and Theatre Calgary production. On the BMO Mainstage, on Thursday June 25. Continues in rep until September 20

A mediocre production of King Lear can make for a very long night—like the one currently unfolding at Bard on the Beach.

Actor Benedict Campbell’s take on the 80-year-old monarch is one of the central problems with this production. Campbell makes some interesting choices regarding the king’s soft underbelly: his Lear seems genuinely afraid of madness, for instance, and, after telling his daughter Goneril that he hopes her womb shrivels, Campbell’s Lear panics because he fears he’s gone too far.

The actor’s pace is sluggish, however, and his declamatory delivery often phony. Where’s the rage, the monstrous self-indulgence, the abiding horror? Too often, Campbell’s Lear comes across as an actor who’s enjoying the sound of his own voice rather than as a soul in agony. And, when Lear’s daughter Cordelia dies, Campbell makes a butterflies-are-free gesture with his hands that is so sentimental that it deserves to be booed.

For those unfamiliar with the plot, Lear divides his kingdom between his daughters, Goneril and Regan, who win his favour by professing their love in hyperbolic terms. When Cordelia, the youngest, refuses to follow suit, the furious king disinherits her. Part of Lear’s deal with Goneril and Regan is that they are supposed to take care of their father, but they are soon kicking him out of their houses and insisting that he reduce the size of his retinue.

In a subplot, the bastard Edmund schemes against his innocent brother, Edgar. And it doesn’t take long before Edmund is lustfully licking his lips at Goneril and Regan, who lick right back.

Edmund is one of the great villains—the guy is a deeply dangerous sociopath—but, as played by Michael Blake, he’s a charming bad boy, a light comic character. There’s a price to be paid for this approach: on opening night, when Edmund’s father, Gloucester, got his eyes gouged out thanks to Edmund’s machinations, the audience laughed; in this Lear, the danger and the horror rarely feel real, so they come across as ridiculous.

In director Dennis Garnhum’s interpretation, characterizations are too often indistinct as well as superficial. The wicked Edmund’s brother, Edgar, is the embodiment of tortured purity, and a savvy director would emphasize that contrast. Here, Nathan Schmidt delivers a perfectly respectable piece of work—one gets the impression that he’d be capable of more, given better direction—but, within the confines of Garnhum’s vision, Edgar comes across as just another guy, as opposed to an archetypal figure.

Scott Bellis, who plays Lear’s jester, delivers by far the strongest characterization in this production. Bellis’s Fool is not only funny, which is no mean feat considering the complexities of the character’s antique jokes, he is also an intelligent and profoundly melancholy soul. There’s more going on in Bellis’s silences than in many of the other actors’ speeches.

Physically, John Murphy feels too slight to play the salt-of-the-earth fighter and Lear’s most loyal lord, Kent, but Murphy brings a heart full of feeling to the role, which is exactly what it calls for.

There’s nothing subtle about Colleen Wheeler’s Goneril, but her appetites are huge and she’s wildly alive, so she’s always interesting to watch. Andrea Rankin’s Cordelia, on the other hand, is amateurish.

The medieval setting that Garnhum has chosen might satisfy folks who think Shakespeare should always be performed in Elizabethan dress and who are unable to tell the difference between the periods, but it’s not particularly illuminating.

Bard on the Beach is a major cultural institution in Vancouver. We should demand better from it.