entertainment

Review of "Lear's Follies"

Season of Lear Begins At Artists Repertory Theatre

Tobias Anderson and Matt Smith in "Lear's Follies" currently playing at Artists' Repertory Theatre

By Chloe Hagerman

Jul 16 12:00am

This summer Portland Shakespeare Project presents “The Season of Lear”; two plays that pay tribute to Shakespeare’s original tragedy King Lear. The first show, Lear’s Follies, is a more contemporary adaptation of the tragedy by playwright C.S. Whitcomb that had its world debut Friday night on Artist Repertory Theatre's Morrison Stage.

Lear’s Follies is set in America in 1929 on the eve of the stock market crash. King Lear has become Colonel Leroy King, a Civil War veteran who started a successful tobacco empire in Virginia. He retires and is ready to hand his empire over to his children. Whitcomb changed Lear’s two eldest daughters, Regan and Goneril, into sons, who profess their love and admiration for their father and receive their inheritance. His youngest child, daughter Corey, is truthful and says simply that he knows she loves him, and a furious King gives her nothing. The greedy sons, once they have their wealth, quickly cast their aging father aside and twist the empire he built beyond recognition. Corey is the only child at all concerned for her father, who is now destitute and wandering the streets.

When the stock market crashes, the family is left with nothing. Everyone gathers back at the family home in Virginia as a fierce hurricane approaches.

What struck me most about this performance was the fighting between King and his two sons. They are very energetic and emotional quarrels, and the audience most definitely feels the shock of a father who has misjudged his children. The setting of this play during the greatest economic hardship in our country’s history strikes close to home as well. Many folks nearing retirement today worry about not having enough assets, and many children simply ship their parents off to retirement homes. King Lear’s situation is, according to Whitcomb, “Every Baby Boomer’s nightmare.” With so many hardships and the world falling apart, Lear’s Follies can help us to remember, in our own time of hardship, to find the truest companions in our own lives and keep them close.

Lear's Follies runs through August 5th at Artists Repertory Theatre.