King Lear

I just finished watching King Lear at BAM and it was a pretty awesome experience. When I saw awesome I mean that it inspired awe within me. King Lear is a great play, and is probably one of my new favourite Shakespeare's. What I'd like to comment about this particular show is that it was so visually stunning at some points. There wasn't any manipulation of the text, which is something that I've seen a lot and never enjoy as much as the normal kind of stuff. Over the summer I saw Comedy of Errors at Shakespeare in the Park and it was good, but setting it in the 20s felt weird for me, and I was always asking, "why do this," and "what is the significance?" I found myself not being able to find a good reason for why the director decided to do that for that particular show. But this also brings up the question, "how do we try and reinvent Shakespeare so that it doesn't come out worse?" Going to King Lear, I felt that what they did was brilliant because they took all the technology that is available today and used that to make the show visually stunning, without taking away the essence of the play. There was this wonderful scene, where Lear was outside in a storm, and they drowned the stage with actual rain while Lear started to go crazy. That was something beautiful to watch because you have Frank Langella screaming at the top of his lungs while he is being drowned by rain, and the lighting complemented the entire thing. What also made it wonderful was the fact that the stage stayed wet for the rest of the act, and made Edgar's first scene after he had becoming a little crazy himself and was living as a bigger, even more awesome. and the BAM Harvey theatre is one of the most beautiful theaters I have been in, even though the chairs are kinda crap, so that adds even more to the visual aspect of the show.