Word: bsc
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...some fine moments (a giddy Macbeth sprawling pitifully on the ground while plotting Banquo's death), the stylization produces tiresome histrionics (Macbeth: "O! full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife." Macbeth clutches head, presumable to show us scorpions) redolent of countless mediocre productions of Shakespeare. Most of the BSC actors lack the intensity to pull...
...BSC has heretofore restricted itself largely to the comedies, which might account for the lack of emotional clout which mars the acting in this production. (We should at least give the company credit for attempting such a dark work, something the American Repertory Theater has yet to do.) Performances begin to fray at the edges of the company: Lloyd Morris portrays a terribly sappy Malcolm, and Henry Woronicz as Banquo has too much of that Ewell Gibbons pleasantness to be credible in this nuthouse. The weird sisters, too, seem strangely mundane, more like a couple of Cockney flower girls...
...BSC Supervisor...
...Cain's King Lear creates ironies like that; the production staggers like blind Gloucester between a formal, tradition-ridden interpretation and a self-consciously innovative approach, until it topples over a Dover cliff of its own creation into farce. Too many serious lines receive laughs, or worse, snickers, from BSC's audience; the incongruities in Cain's direction must take the blame...
...BSC's Lear leaves you with a lot of questions about the place of innovation on the Shakespearean stage. No one would argue for a theater of sterility, shunning all new ideas as "deviations from the author's intentions." But when you have a competent group of performers, and at least one actor of stature and brilliance who can use a play like Lear as a personal vehicle, it seems a cheat to squander the resources on half-baked ideas, directorial interpretations that aren't followed through, and "innovations" that clash with each other. Cain should either have moved...