King Lear in New Haven, CT

King Lear. Directed and adapted by Karin Coonrod. University Theatre, New Haven, CT, June 15-16, 2024.

As I was walking to this performance, I thought of the “gimmicks” I’ve seen in various productions of Shakespeare – e.g. gender flipped cast, all female cast, cast of only three actors total, cast of all children. Or even, more specifically, unusual staging of King Lear in particular (e.g. that the Fool disappears because Lear killed him), some that are done often enough that they become something to look for and not really unusual (e.g. the double casting of the same actor as Cordelia and the Fool). This production joins the ranks of such experiments with the ten actors wearing paper crowns appearing among the audience. The actors take turns reciting Lear’s lines, and as they go, some of them remove their crowns as they take on the roles of other characters. This process of reducing the number of Lears onstage continues through the storm scenes. (The action also continues in the theater and not on the stage, through the storm scenes.) The cast is further truncated by the complete removal of Cornwall and Albany from the play.

I think any evaluation of a production of King Lear should start with the most straightforward test: Did you leave the theater utterly exhausted? Any production of a tragedy, for it to be considered a success, has to be harrowing, physically and spiritually draining – and King Lear even more intensely than…