The True History of the Life and Death of King Lear & His Three Daughters comes to Belvoir St Theatre from 15 November, starring Colin Friels and a cast of exciting talent. Raj Labade is playing Edmund, and The Scoop had the chance to sit down and chat ahead of the season. Raj talks all things Shakespeare, including breaking the fourth wall and how Edmund’s role will resonate with modern audiences. Read the full interview below.
How did you first connect with the story of King Lear? Was it through school, the famous Edmund monologue, or something else?
Well, the famous Edmund monologue is probably one of the most common audition monologues they do for drama schools. I’ve heard that monologue so many times. I was never particularly interested in it because it’s been done to death.
But I think I must have watched Anthony Hopkins do a filmed version of Lear; I think they did that in 2018. I remember watching that and thinking that Edmund was a fantastic part, mostly because he’s this bastard. I could see myself playing someone who could quite easily be written as mixed race, which I thought was quite cool.
It’s a pretty interesting bit of casting. I could imagine having that duality as you’re going between your accepted family and then being portrayed as a bastard would be crazy.
It’s exactly what mixed-race people experience in their lives. It felt like I’ve had him on my wall for about seven or eight years, thinking about doing it one day. And so it sort of manifested.
That’s so cool! I’m literally in my office at the moment, and I have lots of things on my wall as well. It’s awesome to hear that other actors do it too.
My mum gave me these Shakespeare playing cards a few years ago. They’ve just been on my wall for years, the parts that I really liked.
Phenomenal! We might come back to that at the end of our chat. Can you tell me a little bit about this production, and speak to what audiences might expect from this ‘re-energised’ version of King Lear?
It’s one of those plays that can only be done once every couple of years, depending on who your Lear is. You need an actor to be right for the part, but also the right age, and to be someone that people want to see tackle something that muscular. So, I think a lot of this has to do with Colin being ready to do a part like this.
I’ve never been aware of him until now, but he seems to be taking it quite seriously. He’s also been building to this for a while.
Yeah, I think so. I think a lot of actors build to Lear. There is a trajectory of parts that a lot of actors find themselves falling into. And for a lot of actors, Lear is one of the great parts that you have to survive a career to get to. So I’m really excited to see Colin’s version of it.
I also think Eamon has done a great job in picking some fantastic actors. One of the key themes of Lear is the younger rising and the old falling. And he’s cast all of Lear’s daughters and their husbands, all from around my generation. It does feel like we’re taking up that mantle in this production.
I love that phrase ‘survive a career.’ What do you think the potential trajectory is that actors go on to get to Lear?
It’s interesting, I spoke to Peter Carroll about this, and there are quite a few different ways to get there. I know Colin played Edmund when he was around my age. I think some of those parts include Romeo or Mercutio in Romeo & Juliet. And plays like Hamlet. There are a lot of parts that people find themselves being drawn to, and it’s often to do with what their type is. It really depends on who you are and what life you bring to these characters.
A lot of actors will either do Edmund or Edgar, who are the two brothers who are very contrasting. The way that they’re cast in those parts is very interesting. I think Tom Conroy’s been cast as a perfect Edgar, and it’s something that I could never do. A lot of these parts were written for Richard Burbage, one of Shakespeare’s favourite actors. And as he got older, the better parts also got older.
At WAAPA, you played Hamlet. Has there been anything in your previous training or theatrical experience that has helped you prepare for Edmund?
Hamlet’s a pretty interesting one, because it’s a very similar relationship that Hamlet can have with the audience that Edmund also has. It’s a lot of connection directly with the audience, using direct address. And that’s Edmund’s role, similar to Richard’s role in Richard III. Even though Edmund’s a villain, there is still that ability to connect with the audience. And that was something that I practised at drama school, which was very helpful to do parts like that.
Shakespeare wrote these plays for spaces that are not much bigger than Belvoir. How do you navigate that intimate, focused relationship between the audience and the performers?
I think Belvoir is the best stage in Australia, and I’ve been lucky enough to perform in quite a few different theatres over the last couple of years. There’s nothing that quite marries the scale of it being a large main stage with the intimacy of what that stage can offer. You can be at the back of the Belvoir theatre and still be so close to the actors.
I think it really lends itself to something like Shakespeare. Because I think Shakespeare is muscular, and they’re really muscular parts. It requires physical presence and strength to grapple with the language. There’s nothing more exciting than seeing an actor really inhabit that language on a stage like Belvoir. It’s just perfect for it.
And with that muscularity, has there been anything in rehearsal so far that has surprised you, or maybe a moment that punched a little bit harder than expected?
I think there have been quite a few moments, and that’s what Shakespeare does at the best of times. As modern audiences, we’re quite visual now. We’re used to watching films and watching people tell stories quite silently. Shakespeare was written for a time when our language and our vocabulary were larger. That’s why there are so many words in it that are difficult to understand and are more descriptive than the words we use now.
The best part about Shakespeare is, even if you get lost in a scene, or you find you didn’t understand that word, or the context of it, every act in a Shakespeare play has a moment that just lands, and you feel something. And that’s what’s most important. It’s like Christopher Nolan talking about how you don’t have to understand his movies, you just have to feel something. That’s exactly what this is.
You mentioned earlier about the young rising and the old falling. What kind of conversations has this production sparked amongst the cast or creatives about power or a regime trying to pass itself on?
Well, you could apply it to anything. You could apply it to what’s happening in theatre right now or what happened in the last 10 years. There is always a new generation that needs to claim something before it can be passed on. It’s never an easy transition of power, and that’s what this play is about.
It’s about a king who, whether it’s madness or whether it’s a plan that didn’t quite work, he’s trying to retire, but he’s never really quite able to let go of who he is. He will always see himself as a king and a leader. And there’s tragedy in that, because it blows up his world and the world of everyone around him.
Eamon, your director, described the play as being about ‘beauty, horror, love and desperate need’. Where do you see Edmund fitting into that description, particularly with his relationship with Edgar or his flings with Reagan and Goneril?
I think love and desperate need. Eamon’s right, all of those words apply to Edmund as well, but love and desperate need are very clear. That young rising, old falling line, that’s a line Edmund says: The young rise when the old doth fall.
He’s talking about his mother and stealing everything that she has. He’s a person who has been disenfranchised by his status and the way he was born, through no fault of his own. He’s hungry to take and to devour. To be something, to be worth something. It’s really a desire to be loved by someone, to be valued, which I think is very, very real.
Not to get too political, but some of the horrible things you see young men perpetrating, particularly with all these immigration protests, are about what people are willing to believe because they want to feel that they are worth something. They want to feel like they have power, that things aren’t being taken away from them, and they do horrible things in the name of that. I think that feels very relevant and real.
There’s an interesting parallel between younger actors having to claim these roles before they are passed on, and Edmund trying to claim what belongs to his mother before it is passed on. What do you think Edmund’s journey ultimately says about the self? Is it a cautionary tale, or is it something else entirely?
I’m really interested to see what audiences say. I want to talk to people after they see the show, because Shakespeare wrote Edmund to be a villain. He talks about how it takes more quality to have someone out of wedlock, because they’re more virile, there’s more lust and all that sort of stuff. He’s subverting all those Elizabethan and Jacobean ideals, which are all about living in a feudal system where there are people who have a divine right to rule, and we have to accept that.
So, I think Shakespeare wrote Edmund to be booed. People would have been vocal about a lot of the things he was saying. Maybe we don’t agree with what he does with the murder and treason and things. But I’m really interested to see what people think, because I think they will agree with him a lot more now.
It’s so interesting how a character can be viewed differently as time passes. In those conversations with audiences afterwards, what do you want them to take away, not just about power, but about humanity?
There’s so much, it’s such a dense play. If you miss anything, there will always be a scene that stays with you. I remember when I watched it for the first time, I just fell in love with the character of Gloucester, Edmund’s father, and the scene that he has with Edgar, where Gloucester tries to commit suicide.
For me, it felt so, so real and so heartbreaking. But there are so many scenes like that in the play. I think everyone will find something that they connect with, because even though it’s an old play, it is just so human that it’s timeless.
I’d be kicking myself if I didn’t ask about your experience on The Office Australia. I’d love to hear about what it was like. Were there any lessons or experiences you’ve taken from that set going forward?
It’s been a while since I’ve thought about it! What I really loved was the form. I’m a big fan of the original series and the US series. I learned a lot about the asides and breaking the fourth wall. The thrill of that, and how simple it can be to do that look to camera that’s so iconic in those mockumentaries. I really enjoyed that.
I love that with The Office, you got to break the fourth wall, and now with Edmund, you’re also speaking directly to the audience.
It’s such a lovely parallel. There are some keys for that, because we really have mastered the aside that Shakespeare uses in a lot of our work. And I think people look at Shakespeare and wonder, ‘Why is the character breaking the fourth wall in the middle of a scene and talking to us?’ And particularly as an actor, it feels so strange. But we do it in so much in our contemporary work, we just forget.
Let’s go back to that wall you have with all the characters you like. Are there any other roles that you’d particularly love to explore? What else is there on your bucket list?
There are quite a few things. I’ll just say the Shakespeare ones. I’ve got a Hamlet sticker on my wall, a Romeo sticker, and an Edmund one. Those were the three that I thought I’d love to try in this decade of my life.
My last question is one that we ask everyone we chat to. Do you have any advice for anyone who wants to pursue a career in this industry?
If you’re starting from scratch, figure out if you love it. Do as much of it as you can; it doesn’t matter if it’s bad. And if you can’t get in a room, if you can’t even do a community theatre show or an indie theatre show, put it on yourself. Shakespeare is free. You don’t need to buy rights to that. There’s a lot of potential in learning how to act by doing it.
Raj Labade performs in The True History of the Life and Death of King Lear & His Three Daughters at Belvoir St Theatre from 15 November – 21 December 2025. Upstairs Theatre, 25 Belvoir St Surrey Hills NSW 2010.
Tickets: https://my.belvoir.com.au/overview/13845
Website: https://belvoir.com.au/productions/king-lear/
Socials: https://www.instagram.com/belvoirst/ and https://www.instagram.com/rajlabade/
Photo credits: Brett Boardman
