KING LEAR

Presented by

So What? Productions

THEATRE (NSW)

Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy & his most human. This student theatre ensemble rip the heart out, stick it on a spike and shove it in your face.

16 – 28 Feb - Tickets From $12.00 Venue: Holden Street Theatres – The Arch

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2010 ADELAIDE FRINGE REVIEWS

THE ADVERTISER - Samela Harris.

KING Lear is a brutal and confronting play at the best of times but because the Sydney student dramatic society group So What? touted this production as ripping the heart out of the play, sticking it in a spike and shoving it in your face, one expected something brash and anarchical.

Hence, it was surprising to meet something disciplined and classical. This is a very fine group of young actors and how wonderful it is to hear young Australians deliver Shakespeare without a single Australian vowel sound. Not to mention the quality of voices in the group, particularly among the boys - Stephen Sharpe as Lear, Oliver Burton as Gloucester, Houston Ash as Edmond... And, among the females, outstanding is Clare Matchett as Fool.

Newspapers, wheelie bins and good lighting are the secrets to low-budget but highly effective staging and the figure silhouetted against the vast newspaper banner waving a plastic bag to create the sounds of the storm was striking. That this large group of beaut Sydney students has brought this long and earnest play to the Fringe - especially so soon after we've had John Gaden in town doing Lear - is absolutely admirable and if you missed Gaden, cop this lot.

So What? Productions presents King Lear

Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy but also his most human.

An ensemble of student theatre makers rips the heart out of this grand old play, sticks it on a spike and shoves it in your face at the Adelaide Fringe.

A captivating performance of King Lear by a nineteen-year-old student from the University of Sydney reminds us that Lear is a human being: whether he’s ninety or nineteen, a King or a cretin, English or Ecuadorian. This charged interpretation of King Lear argues forcefully that all members of society must connect with each other; once empathy fails us, we don’t recognise humanity and all is lost.

Anarchy and madness descend upon a family when old King Lear tests the love and loyalty of his three daughters. Banishing his youngest for her honesty, Lear is subjected to betrayal and exile by his other daughters and watches his kingdom dissolve in disarray. Driven mad the King wanders in the stormy wilderness while his friends disguised attempt to restore order in a corrupted world turned upside down.

Says Director Christopher Hay, “King Lear unfolds in a world not so very different to yours, one where the former King has to stand by and watch other people stuff up in increasingly human ways. His tragedy is our tragedy: he gets things wrong, badly wrong. The challenge is to realise before it’s too late.”

King Lear will play in Sydney followed by Adelaide and is So What? Productions’ kick-off to 2010 following its acclaimed Sydney season of The Laramie Project.