It’s a Tragedy

Last weekend we went to see King Lear at the Pop-up Globe theater. This particular show was actually the class project of the various youth training courses the theater does, and one of my swim buddies’ daughter was in it.

The players ranged from middle schoolers trying to get out out of gym class right up to over-18s trying to make a career out of acting. In order to give everybody a go, they switched actors frequently, so each part was done by multiple actors of various ages… and genders. Awesome idea for the parents, utterly incomprehensible for us.

The weather was unsettled that night, so at first we couldn’t tell if we were hearing real thunder or the kids on stage crew… but when it just kept on thundering, we knew. It’s impossible to not just keep shaking that big sheet of metal. And although the Kiwi accent lends itself to the Bard’s iambs quite readily, the natural limitations of an unamplified theater, the ‘thunder’, and the kids’ developing pipes conspired against us… we might as well have been watching a play in Farsi.

We bailed at intermission.

The theater itself, supposedly a fairly accurate representation of the original Globe, was awesome, and it would be great to go back and see a production where we could hear/understand more clearly.