"If Jackson’s performance turns this inventive but imperfect production into a must-see of the Broadway Spring season, it’s not just because of her impressive stamina and control. It’s also the appearance of physical fragility that helps make her Lear stand out."
"But nearly all the pathos of this King Lear lies in the haphazard wreckage of the production that could have been. Blurry and superficial, the shape of power without its impact, the production that is is little more than Lear’s shadow."
"this intermittent concert seems to be competing with, rather than underscoring, Shakespeare’s bleakest tragedy."
This. THIS.
"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers." Thomas Pynchon, GRAVITY'S RAINBOW
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." Philip K. Dick
My blog: http://www.roscoewrites.blogspot.com/
For me the biggest problem with the production, which I saw about a week ago, was the total, utter, absolute absence of anything remotely resembling even the vaguest whisper of an emotional connection between Lear and Cordelia. There was nothing, zip zero zilch -- for the first time in my experience with this story I found myself imagining Cordelia on the throne of France, laughing laughing laughing and suggesting to her husband that there might be some nice real estate in her home country they could pick up cheap.
The emotional centers of the play were Kent and Gloucester. At least they were the night I saw it. Maybe this issue has been addressed since then.
"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers." Thomas Pynchon, GRAVITY'S RAINBOW
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." Philip K. Dick
My blog: http://www.roscoewrites.blogspot.com/