The play and other stuff...

[erinya_dhaunae]

The play was wonderful! Sir Ian McKellen was amazing, but so were a number of cast members, particularly Frances Barber who played Goneril. She had the ball-breaker routine down to a fine art *lol

Comments

[ghetsuhm]

I wrote an Honours essay on Lear, and my memory is trying to tell me it was McKellan in the film version of it that I saw... that can't be right.

I argued very hard that the play doesn't support an optimistic, Christian-salvation-based reading, that part of what makes the play so depressing is its total lack of moral code.

[erinya_dhaunae]

*nods* I think that's actually kind of true. Often, rather simplistically, everyone goes on about how awful Goneril and Regan are to do what they do. Yet, at least part of it is kind of understandable. Lear right from the get-go makes a stupid decision because Cordelia wasn't prepared to flatter him. Then, when he does give up the power, he wants to act as if he hasn't given up the power and generally run riot. I find it hard to be surprised that his two elder daughters object to that given that it's their households he's disrupting.

Not that they're angels by any means. The things they do out of jealousy of each other because of Edmund are bad, and Edmund himself is completely amoral. About the only person who comes across as having a crumb of human decency is Edgar.

Fred Charles Said:

[anonymous]

It must have been something to see such a well known actor perform live!