Word: lear
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...belonged to a time -- a tragedy -- when large literary lines did not seem off, or ridiculous, as they might now. Hamlet and Lear, "if worthy their prominent part in the play," wrote Yeats, "do not break up their lines to weep." She, magnificently, did not break up her lines to weep. There was another thought that was associated especially with her husband: Courage is "grace under pressure." But that line applied to her in some truer way than it applied to him. She earned it in a harder fashion...
...early 1960s, Ionesco attracted such collaborators as Jean-Louis Barrault, who magically staged A Stroll in the Air; Laurence Olivier and Zero Mostel, who both played the lead in Rhinoceros (with Mostel winning a Tony Award on Broadway); and Alec Guinness, who starred in Exit the King, a Lear-like portrait of the inevitability of death. Ionesco was hailed as someone who might bridge the gap between literature and entertainment. Instead, his work grew more remote and austere, and his audiences dwindled. His last play, Journeys Among the Dead, was withdrawn before opening in New York City...
...FRANCES LEAR...
That they can, and that a play which often seems like a cross between King Lear and a Monty Python episode can somehow enmesh its audience emotionally is a tribute to the exceptional work of the Royal National Theatre's repertory company. The cast is exceptional and Bennett's play makes the most...
...Prince's decadence stands Dr. Willis, the commoner dispatched from Lincolnshire to cure the King. Clive Merrison does a good job of portraying Willis' frustration with and isolation from his aristocratic surroundings. (As the king is recovering, an appalled equerry asks Willis why he has George reading "King Lear" Willis replies tersely, "I didn't know what it was about") But Bennett has no intention of making Willis any more sympathetic than his aristocratic counterparts and Merrison aptly conveys Willis' despotic side...