Thine Plotline Doth Create Confusions of A Most Objectionable Humour

M and I went to see a stage production of King Lear last night. I wouldn't go so far as to say it was a delightful evening, but I don't regret the experience either.

For a change, I got to M's apartment in a timely manner (though, now that we're married, I guess we could call it "our apartment in the city"), so there was plenty of time to dine and basically chill. Unfortunately, a faulty clock caused us to have to rush to the theater at the last minute anyway. The swift journey from the car to the theater doors (to say nothing of the 3 or 4 flights of stairs to the upstairs theater) showed me just how out of shape I have become.

Our seats, as it turns out, were in the second row, all the way on the left side. Not the best location, considering that it was a wide stage with stuff happening all across it that required a lot of head-turning to see. Also, the actors were projecting their voices to be heard 100 rows behind us, so the volume from where we were sitting was a bit loud.

The dialogue was in English, of course, but I still couldn't figure out what was going on. Subtitles would have been nice. When Intermission began, M told me that she had once worked on a production of King Lear, and she still has no idea what's going on.

There seemed to be some set directions that were pointless, aside from the opportunity for the set designers to show off what they could do. At one point, King Lear starts a-yellin', and one of the background walls falls with a mighty kablam (waking up a few sleepy theater patrons in the process). At first, I thought that some horrible accident had occurred, and the actors were just keeping their composure remarkably well and continuing to stay in character. But then, a few minutes later, Lear goes into another rage, and the other background wall falls with another kablam. That's when I was sure that, for some reason, the director wanted the walls to fall. Symbolism of the House of Lear falling apart? Who knows.

Then, they had actual rain during the Out In The Rain scene. But since they didn't want to get the whole stage wet, they had one of Lear's servants open up a hatch in the stage, and a narrow waterfall of rain fell into that. So Lear and The Fool are standing in a 6 or 7 foot wide hole in the stage, with only their knees on up showing, while a narrow band of rain falls on them. Then, Lear's knave shows up with an umbrella, but by then Lear has moved to the edge of the hole, and the umbrella is really only stopping the outer drizzle. It was kinda silly. But the set designer was probably kissing his or her own butt over the brilliant special effects. Real water in the rainy scene! Brilliant!

During Intermission, we had blackberry soda and peanut butter cookies, both of which were delicious. As we went to re-enter the theater, we noticed a sign saying that the running time was 3 hours. At this point, it was 9:30, the play was only half-over, and we still had a 25 minute drive back to our apartment in the suburbs ahead of us. So we decided to just leave while we still could. Going down the stairs, we passed a couple of actors coming up, one of whom was still wet from the masterful Rain Scene. I felt a little bad, and felt like assuring them that it was nothing personal that we were bugging out halfway through their performance. But I said nothing, since they were probably all in the moment and everything.

It ended up being a good idea to leave early. By 11 pm, around the time the play was ending, we were both pretty much asleep. Lucky thing the tickets were free! I'm pretty sure they were free.