...Who struts and frets his hour upon the stage...

I saw a production of King Lear this weekend. And since I'm about to rip it apart, I won't say who did it.

Now, let me start by saying that Lear is my most favorite of Shakespeare's plays. It's got all kinds of good stuff in it -- sword fightin', pun makin', eye pluckin', and, of course, Lear, who is, in my not so humble opinion, one of the best Shakespearian characters evar. Plus, the ending is so goddam tragic (my favorite line: "Howl! Howl! Howl! Howl!") that if you're not crying when you leave the theatre, you are men of stone (as Lear would say) or the production sucked.

I wasn't crying as I left the theatre. I think if I had to choose one word to sum up this production, it would be "distracting".

First of all, the actor who played the Duke of Burgundy/Oswald was distractingly awkward. It's like he was reading his lines from a teleprompter -- he didn't even attempt to actually, y'know, act. Those aren't huge parts, but he made me wince every time he was on stage. Plus, he looked and sounded like he was stoned. Eyes half-closed, slumped over, moving slowly...it was just weird.

Second, the director's eighth-grade kid and some other kid got a bit part playing the recorder. You know, for fanfares and such (because nothing announces a nobleman's entrance like a fanfare played on the recorder). This would have been fine ... except that the two kids played in different keys. Now, I'm all for the liberation of dissonance, but this was just bad. And to make it worse, they actually played over the beginning of that awesome and heart-wrenching scene when Lear is reunited with Cordelia. It was supposed to sound soft and soothing, I guess. It sounded instead like someone strangling a nightingale.

And then there was the actress playing Edgar.

Okay, I have no problem with females playing male parts or vice versa. I mean, Shakespeare's male actors had to play female parts all the time, so why not do the opposite now? The actress who played Kent in this production actually did a pretty good job. But if you're a woman playing a role like Edgar -- who is not, as far as I know, flamboyantly homosexual -- try to be a bit more masculine. That means lower your voice a bit and try to, you know, move like a man would. I swear for the first couple of Edgar's scenes, I thought the director was trying to imply that Edgar had a thing for Edmund. Which is an interesting interpretation, but perhaps not what Willy had in mind. According to her bio in the program, this actress had like a decade of experience working with physical theatre and voice training, so you'd think she'd know that kind of stuff. But apparently, she got this role because the director liked how she played Edgar-as-crazy-Tom. This actress interpreted "crazy beggar" as meaning pulling off some Bob Fossee moves and writhing around on the ground while shifting among various angular poses. Now, if this were not Shakespeare's King Lear, but instead a new one-man show titled "Lear!", that kind of stuff might've actually worked. Instead, it was just weird.

But, you know, besides all that, it was good.