Word: lear
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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DESPITE several glaring faults, Theater Works' King Lear succeeds. The acting is strong, the pace appropriate, and the technical effects tasteful for the majority of the three hour production...
...King Lear recounts the title figure's rejection of his youngest daughter, Cordelia, and betrayal by his other two daughters, Goneril and Regan. An interrelated sub-plot tells how the bastard Edmund discredits his legitimate brother Edgar and claims the lands of their father, Duke of Gloucester. Simple stories, but Shelley called this play, "the most perfect specimen of dramatic poetry existing in the world...
...story itself inevitably dominates any production of King Lear, and the Theater Works performance succeeds best where it is most restrained, allowing the actors to give "unaccommodated" life to the text. Tim McDonough does admirably with the difficult title role he is particularly fine when mad. He never breaks character or lapses into monotony during his longer speeches. He does, however, raise his voice too often--blunting the effect of some of the later scenes-- and occasionally speaks too quickly to be easily understood...
...deficiency appears in Arthur Strimling's Kent; Strimling plays a servant, rather than a nobleman playing a servant. That complexity is crucial to the role of Kent, since in a class-conscious Elizabethan context, Kent's willingness to humble himself gives the most extreme proof of his devotion to Lear...
...ASPECT of King Lear which the Theater Works production presents most clearly is Lear's struggle to distinguish between wisdom and folly, reality and insanity. Although that achievement belongs primarily to McDonough's Lear, it owes almost as much to the agility of Kevin Keragga's Fool. The Fool acts as Lear's gadfly, confronting him with harsh truths, but his actions and speech are so thoroughly inconsistent that neither Lear, nor the audience ever completely comprehends him. Keraga does a brilliant job of balancing flamboyance and melancholy, credibility and recklessness. His manner and movements, as well as his recitation...