By George, the King Is Mad

By WILLIAM A. HENRY III/LONDON

Britain's royal family ventures out to the occasional James Bond movie or Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, but rarely has it taken as keen an interest in culture as it has in Alan Bennett's drama The Madness of George III. Based on the actual derangement of the King who lost the American colonies, the play begins an East Coast tour this week in its Royal National Theatre production. For the House of Windsor, of course, it is not merely an entertainment. As director Nicholas Hytner recalls, "The royal family saw it as a sad and moving story of a close relation." Princess Margaret went up to Hytner at intermission, "drink firmly in hand," and asked what ailed the twitching, foaming monarch. The King, Hytner explained, suffered from the metabolic disorder porphyria. "And what causes it?" the Queen's sister asked. As her advisers and courtiers semaphored behind her to wave off the truth, antiroyalist Hytner smiled sweetly and said, "It's hereditary."

Prince Charles came better briefed. Without help from Hytner, the heir apparent explained to his entourage the disease's cause and effects, then added, "I understand there are six people in Dartmoor ((prison for the criminally insane)) who say that they are the real Prince Charles. I often wonder if perhaps one of them is the real Prince Charles and I am the insane one." Queen Elizabeth did not see the play, but she has met its star, Nigel Hawthorne, at a couple of receptions. "From her remarks," Hawthorne says, "clearly the Queen is under the impression that I am Sir Humphrey Appleby" (the dithery politician he played on the TV series Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister).

Part court spectacle, part history lesson, part medical thriller, the play is above all a vehicle for Hawthorne, in a role akin to Lear. His George III even reads lines from Lear to one of his physicians in a scene indicating recovery. The action is set in 1788 and 1789, and the U.S. colonial uprising is just a bitter memory. The piece focuses far less on politics than on family life and the ambitious scheming of the Prince of Wales.

Despite the skepticism toward monarchy of both playwright and director, George III emerges as a good man though clearly not a great one, of limited intellect but vastly higher moral stature than the assorted connivers exploiting his plight. In contrast to royal marriages of the present generation, the King's bond with Queen Charlotte is presented as intensely companionable, albeit not monogamous. The primary villains are the doctors, one therapeutically obsessed with inspecting bowel movements, another with making the King sweat and vomit, a third with blistering his flesh, a fourth with humiliating him into submission. None does the least good. His problem is chemical imbalance, and his remission -- alas, only temporary -- results from the body's healing itself.

The play is the richest yet by Bennett, known in the U.S. mainly for such minimalist video dramas as An Englishman Abroad with Alan Bates and Talking Heads with Maggie Smith. The staging's cinematic blend of pageantry and intimacy is a drama showcase for Hytner, best known for musicals such as Broadway's Miss Saigon and the Broadway-bound London revival of Carousel. The brevity of the eight-week U.S. run, combined with its vast scale -- 23 actors onstage and a staff of 22 -- pretty much ensures it will be at best a break- even for the Royal National. Explains artistic director Richard Eyre: "We are doing it to raise our profile." Although Britons generally rate his troupe above the Royal Shakespeare Company, Americans know the R.S.C. better ) because of the likes of Nicholas Nickleby. As a result, U.S. tourists account for only 6% of the Royal National's box office even at the height of summer. Madness opens Sept. 11 in Stamford, Connecticut, then moves to Brooklyn, New York; Baltimore, Maryland; and Boston.

For all its wit and compassion, theatergoers are likely to find the show most impressive for Hawthorne, who moved from South Africa to London in 1951 and spent the next quarter-century as a journeyman waiting to be noticed via an endless series of character parts, walk-ons and outright rejections at audition. He may not have helped his cause with sufficient ego. "Only at 50," he admits, "did I fully realize I wanted to be an actor." At that point, Yes, Minister made a star of Hawthorne, who bears a striking resemblance to Ralph Richardson. In the past few years Hawthorne found roles that fully challenged him: as novelist-metaphysician C.S. Lewis in Shadowlands and as George III. The former brought him a 1991 Tony Award; the latter earned him, in the same year, London's Olivier Award. He is still deadpan-dismissive about his craft: "You have to understand that throughout life I have more or less played my father. George III's attitude to his sons I took from him."

Wherever he dug up the feelings -- his decades of defeat surely helped -- Hawthorne unforgettably evokes a man who is at once ruler and soiled dependent, blending dignity and hysteria, imperiousness and despair. He makes one hungry to see him all-out as Learand grateful that he finds Shakespearean depths in lesser parts because he finds them in himself.