The Duke of Albany

[maverickseraph]

The Duke of Albany does some strange things. If "King Lear" was a threeday, I hope I would have played him better than he is written:

• he announces his allegiance to the King openly in front of Goneril, giving her time to go to her boyfriend and ask him to kill Albany.
  
• he completely drops the ball and forgets about the captured Lear and Cordelia.
  

Comments

[dolphin949]

yeah, i think it weird that a woman is supposed to be named edmond...but hey, marc wanted the women to be women.

[firstfrost]

It did give a more suggestive interpretation to "Follow me; thou shalt serve me: if I like thee no worse after dinner, I will not part from thee yet."
:)

[aerynne]

Like it wouldn't be weirder for me to be wandering around crosscast in that particular part. I don't make a very convincing guy.

It is weird for some of it, and I could not for the life of me remember for the first two or three weeks of rehearsal that I was playing a *girl*, dammit. It is much more fun for me to be female, though. Also, I have seen girls named weirder things.

[firstfrost]

In the Edmund case, it seems like it trades off unconvincing visuals for unconvincing plot/genre. Doing something like transposing the plot into the present day and making it corporate politics (like the Ethan Hawke Hamlet) would have let lesbian seduction scenes work better for me; as it was, things were played otherwise fairly canonically, so it felt weird. Other people's mileage no doubt varies. :)

[daedorsil]

also, changing genders can add interesting dimensions to the story. Like in a romeo and juliet I saw recently, Benevolio was played by a girl as a girl and her line delivery gave me the impression that *she* was in love with Romeo (it was really cool 'cause it gave all her lines a different twist that still worked). *heh* this reminds me of last term when Holly was Iago and I kinda wished she could have done her character female.