Word: lear
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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From the wings enter two crimson-draped women, who commence a ritualistic dance in the darkness surrounding Lear. The audience, distracted from the old king's contortions, stares into the gloom and realizes that Regan and Goneril have joined their father on the heath...
...Lear takes no notice of them even when they begin to paw him. Suddenly, we hear the women's voices, repeating lines from earlier scenes--but the words don't come from the stage; the actresses are silent. These disembodied voices blare over the same loudspeakers that have simulated the storm for ten minutes. In the din--enough to drive anyone mad--poor Lear's voice drops out, his volcanic speeches unheard, his personal apocalypse mastered by a 50-watt amplifier...
Bill 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...
Such apparent indecision on the director's part knocks the audience off balance. It doesn't help that Cain chooses the very middle of Act III--right before Lear enter's Poor Tom's hovel--for his intermission; the mounting horror in the theater suddenly dissipates when you buy your "Jamaica Cola" in the lobby, and it's difficult to take Lear's self-dramatizing declamation right after a desultory intermission conversation, or a trip to the rest rooms. Thus such atrocities as the general guffaw that followed Lear's "Didst thou give all to thy daughters?" last Thursday night...
Lebow rears his tall bulk up, out of the general confusion at ground level, and almost manages to clear away the smoke Cain's direction pours forth. This is a confident Lear, a rarity considering how many critics believe the role nearly unplayable. Lebow's accomplished command of the Shakespearean line never falters under the unreasonable demands of his role; try shouting "vaunt-couriers of oak-cleaving thunderbolts" sometime, for example, and see how easy...