Word: lear
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...presidential transformations can be reversed. The presidential Nixon of 1969 ended as the bitter, thuggish ghost of San Clemente. Lyndon Johnson, messiah of the Great Society, finished his life as the King Lear of the Hill Country. And Bill Clinton, the shoeshine and the smile of the '90s, confirms everyone's worst suspicions as he departs...
...unfinished text that is speculated to have been born out of a collaboration between Shakespeare and renaissance playwright Thomas Middleton. Of all Shakesperean plays, Timon of Athens needs a strong directorial hand to adapt it for the stage. Chronologically, the play occupies the uncomfortable spot between King Lear and Macbeth and can be easily dismissed as the awkward transition in-between...
...This is undoubtedly a moral play, more so than either Lear or Macbeth, and it presents several complications. The immediate problem is the absence of a working text. The Shakesperean original, involving an anti-climactic number of secondary characters wondering in and out of the stage and one too many perorations from the newly misanthropic Timon, is clearly unsuitable for a student production. To this problem, director Matt Hudson found the simplest solution: he cut. The cast was reduced to about half its prescribed size, Timon's speeches were shortened or eliminated and the verbal exchanges between characters were reduced...
Sure, you've heard of Hamlet and King Lear. But Timon of Athens? This weekend, one of Shakespeare's least known tragedies makes its Boston premier on the Agassiz Stage as director/producer Matt Hudson '03 brings to life a play that was probably never staged in the Bard's own lifetime. But even if you're not a Shakespeare scholar, there's reason to head for the Agassiz. A moving story of friendship and betrayal, Timon resonates with as much power as any of Shakespeare's better-known works...
Essentially, madness is a state which one must enter alone, a place into which nobody, not even the audience in a theater, can follow you. They can follow you to the very brink of madnessand follow you with great interest if your name is Hamlet or King Lear. But they cannot cross that threshold with you; they can only watch the play develop around you once you have become little more than a set piece, a constant force of irrationality. There is a reason that the conflicts of government play a larger role in the second part of Bennett...