King Lear - Theatre for a New Audience offers a solid entry in 2014's battle of the Lears.
Zachary Stewart
March 27, 2014: If you have children, you might eye them with greater suspicion after a viewing of William Shakespeare's King Lear at Theatre for a New Audience's Polonsky Shakespeare Center. The serviceable production dots the i's and crosses the t's in this tragedy of aging without wisdom. If you like your Shakespeare without a lot of auteurship, this is the production for you. Lear (Michael Pennington) is the aging king of Britain. He decides to retire from governing, but not before dividing his kingdom among his three daughters based on their protestations of love for him. While his older daughters, Goneril (Rachel Pickup) and Regan (Bianca Amato), submit to this charade with purple prose and exaggerated supplication, his youngest, Cordelia (Lilly Englert), is having none of it. In response, Lear disinherits her. Of course, he quickly discovers that he shouldn't have put his faith in mere words: Goneril and Regan collude to deprive their father of his remaining power. Meanwhile, Edmund (Chandler Williams), the bastard son of the Earl of Gloucester (Christopher McCann), plots to turn the jealous sisters against each other and seize power for himself, defying his lowly birth and, in the process, throwing his father and "legitimate" brother, Edgar (Jacob Fishel) under the bus. In true Shakespearean fashion, lots of sex and violence ensues.
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