So about two weeks ago LibraryGirl's laptop finally gave up the ghost, may it rest in peace, so I have been unable to update this blog and have now resorted to writing it on my Kindle. It is a bit difficult but I have been itching to post for over a week so it was this or nothing and nothing was not an option!
So onto the RTDA and the great tome 'Approach to Theatre'. When I last left you I said I had read King Lear and let you know how I got on, well I got on . . . well. I found Lear to be a riveting tale that has a lot of potential as a farce if it wasn't so tragic. To start I have to admit I really didn't like Lear himself who acts more like a pectulant child than the King of England. He bases the division of his Kingdom on a daughters single refusal to showboat her love for him. The denouncing and demonisation of this daughter is a shocking scene akin to a public flogging. After all this when his other daughter's started mistreating him I just didn't care. He was a contemptible character and there was no tragedy for me by the end and SPOILER ALERT!!!
When his daughter he denounced at the beginning dies with him at the end I just felt like Lear got his comeuppence. In the main plotline there was no sympathy for Lear, his actions and his selfishness were his downfall and no amount of moaning was going to make him sympathetic. The illegitimate son and love triangle plotline involving Edgar and the two daughters Lear favours seems like a staple of ribald comedy that became popular in the regency period, and is still very popular today, that would be very funny if it wasn't for the underlying themes of patricide and regecide. There is my biggest problem with Lear, it is just doom and gloom throughout. King Lear does not have the morality difficulties that plagues Macbeth and it doesn't put you on the edge of your seat like Othello where you are watching and willing someone to stop that vile villain Iago. Lear is a flat play that depressed me and had no payoff at the end, I don't need a happy ending and Romeo and Juliet which had a similar ending, sorry more spoilers, at least left us with hope that the war between the families was over. Lear gives you nothing inspirational or good just bleakness.
Staging Lear at least seems cheap and simple. The settings are basically great halls and the great outdoors. A throne is pretty much all the scenery you will need so it really is a simple production and that is how I would do it. I would minimise the amount of set but have a huge throne to dwarf Lear to show how small a man he truly is. My direction for the piece would not be sympathetic to Lear I would side with the daughters initially but after act two I am not sure what I as a director could do but present the action as it comes. This play comes down to each individual audience member making their own mind up about Lear. I think to a point the daughters have a point in their quarrel with Lear but murder is never the answer. So does he deserve to die? I think a more appropriate question is how would I tackle this piece? I gave my initial ideas but I keep pondering about it, i've been pondering for four weeks, and maybe that is this play's redeeming feature for me.
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