A Stunning ‘King Lear’ That Reveals, Finally, a King in Full
Nytimes reports that Karin Coonrod’s production of King Lear at La MaMa divides the title role among ten actors, who enter through the audience wearing pale, soiled greatcoats and tall paper crowns and trade Lear’s lines among themselves; when other characters speak an actor removes a crown to become a single figure.
Coonrod trims and collates the play so the tragedy runs in two unbroken hours, staging it against an industrial plastic curtain and a dim, twilight-lit space (lighting by Krista Smith) with music by Frank London; the Fool, Lukas Papenfusscline (a.k.a. leiken), intones his jokes in a mournful descant.
The ensemble includes Michael Potts, Tom Nelis, Tony Torn and Jo Mei, among others, and the cast’s shifting Lears are used to show Lear’s divided mind; Helen Shaw writes that Nelis, as the final Lear, is frail as a reed, stares straight ahead as his loved ones embrace him, and that his solo portrayal of the last act "tore me to ribbons."