You know you're in for something different when you attend Shakespeare's King Lear for when you enter the theater you're watching a woman sitting patiently next to a group of urinals in a men's room. After they urinate, she offers them towels and accepts tips for her work (They never even showed this during Broadway's hit musical Urinetown!). The Shakespeare Theatre Company has remounted the hugely successful Goodman Theatre production King Lear directed by Robert Falls. You won't see any semblance of Elizabethan England. No men in tights here. Falls moves the action to Twentieth century Eastern Europe and the analogy is quite clear that Lear takes after Slobodan Milosevic.
While there are many reasons to explain this, Serbia had no history to compare with the English line of succession which is such a huge part of the play. Everyone is concerned with inheriting the kingdom after Lear passes on. He even attempts to cut a cake the shape of his country into three parts, one to each of his daughters. Can you imagine either Milosevic or even Yugoslavia's Marshal Tito, doing something similar? So from the start, I had a problem with this production.
I got the impression that Falls was presenting a Shakespeare play for young people who don't like Shakespeare or have never been to a Shakespeare play. There's Serbian rock music played by a DJ, there's even rap music, people are dancing waving machine guns. There's male nudity and was that simulated oral sex on women I noticed more than once?
What is going on with directors of Shakespeare?. I noticed that earlier this year in a London production of King Lear directed by Rupert Goold, the wonderful Pete Postlethwaite played the leading role, just before Lear greets the blinded Gloucester is seen masturbating. Can we put a stop to this?
Then I saw this headline: "Unconventional Director Sets Shakespeare Play in Time, Place Shakespeare Intended". Read the wonderful satire at the wonderful web site "The Onion" in which the Morristown New Jersey Community Players set The Merchant of Venice in 16th century Venice. The nerve of the director.
Check out www.theonion.com/content/news/unconventional_director_sets. Thanks to my son Justin for making me aware of this.
You do, however, get your money's worth at the Shakespeare Theatre. This was my first visit to the gorgeous new Sidney Harman Hall located at 610 F Street, NW, just around the corner from the Lansburgh Theatre. But be prepared for a long night. Act I goes an hour and 40 minutes and the entire show lasts about three hours and fifteen minutes.
I admit this was my first time viewing what many call Shakespeare finest work. But then I read that Lear was only produced once in his lifetime. I can see why. There's death, there's more death, and the final scene is full of dead bodies.
For someone who was one of the fortunate few to view Shakespeare's Twelfth Night at the New York Shakespeare Festival/Public Theater directed by Daniel Sullivan and starring Anne Hathaway, Raoul Esparza, Audra McDonald, Michael Cumpsty, Jay O. Saunders, and Julie White (which hopefully will transfer to Broadway like last summer's musical Hair), it's hard to believe the same man wrote both shows.
You will never forget this Lear whether you like it or hate it. Stacey Keach turns in a superb performance in the title role. Wait till you see his dance as the madman Lear. Playing Lear's troika of daughters are Kim- Martin-Cotton, Kate Arrington, and Laura Odeh. They are all wonderful.
Other stand-outs are Chris Genebach (Cornwall), Jonno Roberts (Edumnd), DieteRich Gray (Oswald), Joaquin Torres (Edgar), and Andrew Long (Albany). Two actors deserving special mention are Edward Gero (Gloucester) and Howard Witt (Fool).
