ANEW: About Those Kings

From Lear to Louis: Why Kings Never Seem to Win

Photo by Brian W. Thomas, Forest Park, CA

After the heavy appetizers-as-dinner and a few polite sips of something sparkling, we made our way across the grass, ushered to VIP folding chairs, to take our seats for Shakespeare in the Park in Forest Park, St. Louis. It was exactly four years to the day since I’d last sat under the canopy of trees near the World’s Fair Pavilion, not far from the enormous bronze statue of King Louis IX of France—Saint Louis himself.

King Louis stands tall there, forever cast in battle pose, astride a horse, sword raised to heaven, a symbol once synonymous with the city long before the Gateway Arch ever existed. But symbols don’t stand still, even if the metal does. That statue has been a source of heated debate: Should a monument honoring a crusading king known for antisemitism and Islamophobia still serve as a civic centerpiece? Or should it be removed, not to erase history, but to tell a fuller one?

What people forget is that even the statue's origins were contested. It started as plaster. The artist and the City fought over money—bronze cost more than the city wanted to pay. The artist sued. The city won. The artist lost. The statue stayed. Even back then, kings caused problems.

The irony of all this royal drama playing out at the feet of a city in slow decline is not lost on me. Back in 1904, during the World’s Fair and the Olympics, St. Louis was making a statement: We are rising, modern, powerful. But not long after the statue was planted, the flight to the County began, and the City’s slow slide seemed almost foretold. Symbols can’t stop people from leaving, no matter how tall or bronzed they are.

The first time I came to Shakespeare in the Park in Saint Louis, we saw King Lear. And what a Lear it was. Tony Award-winner André De Shields played the tragic king. Yes, that André—Hermes from Hadestown, a near-mythic figure in his own right, who’s been gracing stages for six decades. He gave a masterclass. Lear, of course, is the old fool of a king who demands his daughters declare their love for him in exchange for power and land. The one daughter who doesn’t flatter him—Cordelia—is banished. She dies. And so does everyone else, more or less. Lear ends up mad, broken, alone. The king, brought low by his own ego.

A quick side note: When I was a young actor, I worked Off-Broadway in The Sovereign State of Boogedy Boogedy, Lonnie Carter’s brilliant, unruly play where André De Shields played King Nebuchadnezzar—yes, that Nebuchadnezzar. The one who torched cities and built gardens in Babylon. In Carter’s version, he’s put on trial by a jury of the righteous: Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. His lawyer, named Danielle, was played by a woman. Everything was topsy-turvy and wise. That show taught me early: beware of kings. They rarely leave a clean legacy.

This year’s king was a different kind altogether: Hamlet. The young prince. The thinker. The hesitator. The avenger.

We were ushered into a tent before the show for some preferred seating perks and pre-show commentary from the Artistic Director and the Board Chair. “This isn’t your typical Hamlet,” they warned. And it wasn’t. I kept thinking about all the other Hamlets—Olivier’s cerebral ghost-chaser, Branagh’s golden-haired epic-maker, Mel Gibson’s messy, moody royal with a vengeance complex. But this version was all its own—tight, modern, and pulsing with the question Hamlet has always asked: What happens when kings fail?

In Hamlet’s case, we see a kingdom rotting from the inside. A ghost returns. A son fakes madness to reveal the corruption of his uncle-turned-king and his complicit mother. In trying to fix the kingdom, Hamlet destroys it. By the end, the stage is littered with bodies.

What is it with kings?

They rise, and they fall. They conquer, and they unravel. Lear. Louis. Nebuchadnezzar. Hamlet. Their legacies are as shaky as their thrones. And they all leave behind the same trail: lawsuits, exiles, betrayals, madness, death.

Even the statues don’t sit right. Even the good intentions crack.

And yet we keep naming cities after kings. Building bronze likenesses. Writing plays about them. Watching them fall, again and again, as if each time we hope they’ll make a different choice. But they never do. Because they’re kings. And that’s the tragedy.

I think about that as I sit in the park, surrounded by people with wine in metal tumblers and hummus in small bowls, clapping for the clever line, wincing at the violence, laughing too hard when it’s too quiet. We know the story. We’ve seen it before. And still, we come back.

Maybe it’s not the kings we’re here for. Maybe it’s the reminder that power, unchecked, always costs something. That ego will always demand more than it gives. That eventually, someone will be put on trial, or cast out, or caught in their lie.

Maybe we come to remember that we don’t need kings. Not really. We just need people brave enough to tell the truth about them.

And if that truth has to be wrapped in iambic pentameter and staged under the stars on a warm June night in St. Louis, so be it.

May it always be so.

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Curated Listening:

Here’s a bit of a curveball for you. I absolutely adore my mentor and friend, André De Shields. As an artist and creative, André has been in the business for nearly six decades. I wrote a piece about him over on my other blog, Praise Song of the Day: André Robin De Shields, A Master at His Craft. Here’s a different overview his life and career as a Broadway icon with Seth Rudetsky. Listen HERE. And also have a listen to André singing his own signature song, “So You Wanted to Meet the Wizard?” HERE (in his original Wiz costume, no less).