It’s hard for me not to feel conflicted when writing this post. On the one hand, I adore Shakespeare, I respect and love the exigence behind this piece, and went in wanting to love it. On the other hand, I feel as though not being able to speak Ukrainian and witnessing a production with such a minimal set and costumes I got very little out of the performance. Which, in all honesty, breaks my heart. I wanted so much to come out of this breaking past the language barriers and really getting something out of the play having already known the story of King Lear from class but at the end of the day I felt empty.
So instead of simply reviewing this in a traditional sense, I think the fairest thing for me to do would be to quickly touch on why I admire this so much as a piece as opposed to highlighting my experience watching it and talking about what I liked. For starters, tragedy has a tendency in history to breed some of the most real and emotionally charged art and you can tell in the emotion put forth by all performers that they’re giving performances based in the reality that they’ve lived. Despite not being actors, it doesn’t matter because there’s a level of realism that almost no actor could truly replicate born through true experience. Aside from the performance side of things, I think the minimalist set was a really intresting choice and it gave the performances a lot of room to breathe to highlight the importance of what they’re saying. The usage of the four scaffolding towers draped in muslin (Canvas?) made the movement to indicate a change in location very easy which I quite appreciated as a viewer. Overall, I wish I got more out of the show but I recognize the importance of it and I’m glad I got to see something that used theater as a response to the events in our modern world.
Theatre in London U of A 