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““Thou know'st, the first time that we smell the air,
We wawl and cry….
When we are born, we cry that we are come
To this great stage of fools.”
"King Lear" is the most profound play ever written. Whenever I come back to it, I discover it’s about something else. In the most obvious sense, it’s a family melodrama, a generational conflict. But that’s just the framework for Shakespeare to explore and illuminate the eternal questions: Are we basically good or evil? Are there moral absolutes? Does God exist? Why is there evil in the world? Or, for that matter, good? Over 400 years old, it’s a very modern play in spirit and yet at times it reads like an ancient oracular text.
I have had the good fortune to see the play performed twice onstage by two brilliant Shakespearean actors – first with Christopher Plummer at Lincoln Center and most recently with Ian McKellen and the RSC at BAM. And there is a wonderful version on video/DVD starring an almost frail Laurence Olivier toward the end of his life that shouldn’t be missed. See it performed, by all means, as often as you can, but know that it’s impossible to process the richness of the language and the ideas while watching the play onstage – it’s like trying to eat a gourmet meal while running a relay race. Like all of Shakespeare's greatest plays, it is a work of literature to be studied and meditated upon, limitlessly rewarding. ”
Tinky wrote this review Sunday, September 23 2007.
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