In which I am confused in so many ways

Back to Kamani tonight to see O Lear, Rangayana’s version of King Lear directed by A.G. Chidamamara Rao Jambe. Spoken in Kannada. Jeh. I don’t even know *where* that language is spoken. From my experience, if the performance is good enough, language barriers shouldn’t be a problem.

I bought a ticket for this show because I’ve always wanted to see Lear, and I keep hearing Mike Albert’s voice in the back of my head chastising me for seeing UofT shows instead of Soulpepper’s Lear this past fall. Also, on the festival website, it claimed that they had given the story a happy ending. What? Lear with a happy ending? I’m in.

Of course, that was before I saw the atrocity that called itself MacBeth which turned me off Indians doing Shakespeare. I entered the theatre with great trepidation, but knowing that, no matter how bad it was, I’d stay till the end just to see the “happy ending”.

There must have been a number of patrons with the same opinion since the house was more than half empty when I arrived. By the end, there must have been less than a hundred people still there, politely clapping for the actors, who looked disheartened at the lack of audience. Hell, even the guy who was supposed to present the director with a plaque had left.

I can’t really judge the caliber of the performance. It turns out that I don’t remember the story as well as I thought I did (I haven’t read it in at *least* a decade) so I was floundering in some parts of the story. What was weird was *everything* was portrayed in a very comical way. There was a clown like quality to all of the performances. To the point where some characterizations made the Jester look comparatively normal.

The setting was interesting. All of the characters were dressed like rejects from Waiting For Godot; ill-fitting clothes, dirty and ragged. No makeup except for dirt and Lear’s nose was painted gold for some reason. Goneril and Regan rags were brighter in colour, and styled in a way that made them look like cougars, further highlighted by the very young men playing their husbands. Cordelia looked relatively normal by comparison, further highlighted by the fact that the King of France looked old enough to be courting women.

The stage was a small hill of mattresses covered in a sheet of burlap. Seriously, if there had been a tree, it could have been Godot. The dull, dirty setting actually blended nicely with how damn ugly the theatre is. All of the properties were represented by either sheets of crumpled newspaper or branches. The lighting design (which included specials for soliloquies) was bearable except for the fact that they’d forgotten to light the first four feet of the stage. Sound was dominated by percussion (the same as everything else I’ve seen). There were musical numbers accompanied by a band and a singer off-stage. But with the micD’ voice of the singer, the onstage singers sounded like they were singing along to a recording.

I was really quite indifferent to the production. During the first half, I read in the program that the “happy ending” consisted of Cordelia and Lear reconciling, I considered leaving. I stuck it out because I felt *bad* that the players had such a shitty house. And the fact that all the Shakespeare style gore happens in the second half. Not that it was gory…… it was still comical.

Maybe my indifference came from how *amazing* the shows were that I saw the two nights prior to this one. (Did I mention how kick-ass they were?)

Tomorrow is one of two nights off from the theatre for this week. Which is good, since I have an absolute *mountain* (Kilimanjaro sized) of stuff to build for the kids performances next week.