Review: Imaginative ‘Lear Redux’ at Odyssey Theatre
- Anita W. Harris
- 8 hours ago
- 3 min read
Adding to previous “reduxes” of William Shakespeare plays like “Titus Andronicus” and “The Tempest,” adaptor and director John Farmanesh-Bocca has crafted a delightfully deep “Lear Redux,” retelling William Shakespeare’s “King Lear” for our times.
Lear here is an aged celebrity actor drifting in and out of delusion, enacting former Shakespearean roles and King Lear in particular. Except here Cordelia is his faithful dog instead of his youngest daughter as in the original play. With whimsical staging, invested acting and a leap into spiritualism, this version of “King Lear” transcends the tragedy to become a guide for moving forward.
A co-production of Odyssey, The New American Theatre and Farmanesh-Bocca’s Not Man Apart - Physical Theatre Ensemble, “Lear Redux” maps the original play onto a decidedly modern setting. Lear (Jack Stehlin) uses a walker to navigate himself past his large portrait as Hamlet to his large bed, where he practices dying by such means as self-stabbing and drinking poison, next to male nurse caretaker Edgar (Ahkei Togun) asleep in a chair.
Stehlin immerses himself completely in this role of the aged actor, physically fluid and engaging his audience with twinkly eye contact — an integral component of this production’s success. He also delivers excellent monologues from Shakespeare, especially Marc Antony’s (timely) “Friends, Romans, countrymen” speech from “Julius Caesar.”
The rest of the ensemble are also energetically invested, including night-shift nurse Edmund (Andres Velez), daughters Goneril (Jade Sealey) and Regan (Eve Danzeisen) and Kent (Dennis Gersten), who here is his brother.
But when the family soon enters with birthday balloons, and roll their eyes as their father enacts dividing his kingdom among them as Lear, we experience them as he does — breaking out in choreographed dance with nostalgic yet festive music before coming back to speaking to him as they were. It’s as if he takes mental breaks from reality to experience how he wishes they could all be.
A couple of times amid the choreographed scenes, though, Lear stops just short of striking the dog Cordelia (Emily Yetter, operating a puppet designed by Eli Presser) while standing on his bed. This is clearly a moment he mentally can’t face.
Through a fictitious and funny “60 Minutes” episode projected onto a sheet, we learn more of the family’s background — how successful he was, how Goneril and Regan resent his absence from their lives even though he provided for their material comfort, and also what happened to Cordelia his daughter.
As in the original play, there is a subplot involving Edmund’s feeling of illegitimacy that eventually leads to Lear out on the street in a storm, taking shelter in a 7-11 convenience store (scenic design by Mark Guirguis). Two apparently destitute and drug addicted men (played by Togun and Velez) join him — all delusional together — eventually all taking off their shirts as a blind prophet (Gersten) echoes spiritualist Deepak Chopra about the nature of true reality (“you are not a drop in the ocean; you are the ocean”).
Accompanying Lear is the faithful Cordelia, as if protector and witness, playing the part of the Fool in the original play. Soon after, Lear is able to follow through on striking Cordelia in his hallucinations, perhaps finally realizing, however tenuously, something about what he had done to her. The final scene is transcendent as Lear is carried off to the unknown on the cast’s shoulders as if on a wave, or perhaps dissolving into or becoming the ocean itself.
“Lear Redux” is thus an altogether creative, humorous and intellectually engaging production that retells Shakespeare’s play in resonant ways that will tickle your fancy, leaving you swimming along with Lear by the end.
“Lear Redux” continues through July 13 at the Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., West Los Angeles, with performances Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. Tickets range from $23 to $43, with some pay-what-you-can performances. For tickets and information, call the box office at 310-477-2055 or visit OdysseyTheatre.com. Run time is 95 minutes with no intermission.