Writes the Isthmus reviewer, Linda Falkenstein, in "Tell me you love me/Strong performances are at the heart of American Players Theatre’s King Lear.'"
We saw the play yesterday. Here's my pre-show photograph to record our attendance:
The play in my pre-show photograph yesterday — here — was "Constellations." Yes, I took the 1-hour drive west to Spring Green 2 days in a row. On Friday, I went with Meade, on Saturday, with my son Chris. Where was Meade when Chris and I were seeing "King Lear," which may or may not have stirred up thoughts of Donald Trump (or the old man who did, like Lear, step down, Joe Biden)?
Meade was taking a 2-hour drive north, to Mosinee, for a Trump rally. I don't think Trump displayed any need for propping up, contrary to Falkenstein's assertion (see post title).
Full video of Trump's Mosinee speech here.
And here is some of Meade's documentation of his presence at what he made sound like a love fest:
ADDED: While I did not watch the play looking for parallels to Trump/Biden, the deep engagement in Shakespeare's tragedy that I sought was impaired by the frequent laughter from the audience. I found Falkenstein's review this morning because I had developed a suspicion that word had gone out that the play was deliberately staged to heighten the comedy and that audience members other than me were committed to providing the actors with support for this interpretation. I found no evidence for my hypothesis. But Falkenstein's review provides a basis for a new hypothesis: The laughers in the audience were thinking of Donald Trump, and, in that light, when they saw tragedy, they thought it was hilarious.
Let me just give one memorable example of the laughter. In Act IV, Scene 6, Gloucester and King Lear are reunited, and we have been witnessing both men going through immense suffering. The lines are:
GLOUCESTER O, let me kiss that hand!
LEAR Let me wipe it first; it smells of mortality.
The audience busted out laughing at "Let me wipe it first." The hell! What explains that?!
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91 comments:
Obv Beyonce was there and the crowd got free tickets.
Mosinee is a small town south of Wausau. It has paper mills and the acrid smell of the mills is awful. If Trump can draw a big crowd in Mosinee, he can draw a big crowd anywhere.
Imagine going through life with The Bad Orange Man occupying so much space in your head. Can't even enjoy King Lear.
Sad. (Heh)
But what about you, Ms. Althouse? Were you immediately struck by the 'parallels to a certain contemporary political figure who has a need for the continual propping up of his ego?' Tell the truth, did it remind you of Joe?
Funny. The first thing that came to mind when I read "You Missed me" top part of the shirt, was Bush 43 billboard line "Missed Me Yet"?
I momentarily missed the intended message. The bottom word brought me back to the present.
It was as if the bleeding Trump didn't mean anything. 🤔
“It has paper mills and the acrid smell of the mills is awful.”
Weird. The only smell I picked up on was the smell of landslide.
They try to impose negative qualities upon Trump that just aren’t true. They are manipulative liars…
does Lear play better than it reads?
We saw King Lear there a few weeks ago. Great night, good performance. Never got any Trump or Biden vibe from the actors, the play itself, or anyone else there. I suppose if the writer's Rorschach test always comes up Trump then she's going to see Trump in every play about the human condition.
It congruently follows the thought we may have missed Trump. I mean, all you have to do is revisit the headlines during the Joe Biden years. Somebody should do a body count. Joe's capricious and precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan, after Trump had worked out an orderly methodical withdrawal. The dead Americans at the hands of the illegals after Joe re-opend the southern border. And the other decisions with less direct responsibility - The failure to lead in the Russia Ukraine dispute. The failure to lead in the dispute between Israel and the Palestinians. The Joe administration body count is long.
I thought Lear's big problem was that the women in whose favor he stepped down turned out to be pure evil. They might not want to puch that parallel too hard.
Love the shirt!
"It’s hard to say."
Translation: There is no evidence that contemporaneously politicizing a work of art has ever persuade anybody about who to vote for... ever.
“LIBERALISM is a mental disorder.”
"Parallels to a certain contemporary political figure whose need for the continual propping up of his ego
Blah blah blah. Every politician is a narcissist, but it’s only a problem when that politician is a Republican.
According to Creep Ellison, Walz, Inga, Maduro, Judge Merchan, Joy Behar, Rachel Maddow, and Xi-Biden - ALL of those people should be rounded up and placed in a concentration camp for re-programming.
Yes. Cordelia is such an "honest" and loyal daughter that she gets married to the King of France. Who presses her claim to the English throne. Right. Then again, Macbeth doesn't really stand up to historical media literacy either. "Gargoyles" was a more faithful retelling of history.
LOYALIST PROGRESSIVE LEFTISM is a mental disorder. Updated for the future.
Yours is an interesting household.
"“It has paper mills and the acrid smell of the mills is awful.”
Weird. The only smell I picked up on was the smell of landslide."
I grew up in Nekoosa, a few miles downriver from Mosinee. The smell today is nothing compared to back then. They've really cleaned it up.
We saw Lear on Broadway starring the late Glenda Jackson in the titular role. That she was a woman playing a man quickly became irrelevant. A tiny woman who commanded the stage. She was biting - all sharp wit and angles. Compelling. Unfortunately, the production itself was terrible. The casting, the set, the staging choices all distracted and detracted from both the play itself and her performance. It was such a waste.
You left out Robert Reich and his "Truth and Reconciliation" sessions.
A landslide/wake-up call!
A relative of mine posted on social media that George Floyd got more recognition than the 13 dead in the Afghanistan withdrawal. Another relative said, no, he didn't, but presented no evidence, as per usual.
I think Spring Green is beautiful. Visited once, and found it very memorable.
Toured both Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin & House on the Rock.
after a few hours trapped inside The House on the Rock - WE wanted OUT!
The area is very pretty. If I lived nearby - I would visit often.
"Parallels to a certain contemporary political figure whose need for the continual propping up of his ego (and his retributive acts to members of his circle who don’t oblige) are obvious."
Watch Tulsi Gabbard's video discussing being placed on the TSA Terror Watch List one day after doing a public interview where she spoke out against a Kamala Harris presidency. She also discussed other actions of our government, like the threatening actions against journalists Matt Taibbi, Katherine Herridge and others. Anyone who concerned about "retributive acts" should watch this video. It will leave you shaken. It is powerful and, most importantly, it is real. This is not some fantasy projection but totalitarian acts being carried out by our government against its perceived opponents right now. People need to take their head out of the sand and wake up to what our government has become (and perhaps always was).
How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless veep.
could there be benign reason to this? that Tulsi may attract violent kooks if seen aboard ?!
dang - I did leave Robert 3rd Reich out.. my bad. He should top the list of Authoritarian a-holes.
"Let me wipe it first."
Maybe people who don't like Trump know that Trump is a germophobe? Who knows?
Anything to get Americans in 21st Century to sit through play from 400 years ago.
Curious if the audience was also laughing inappropriately during the performance you attended.
Abusing Shakespeare to abuse Trump. Remember Julius Caesar in Central Park? Wonder if any of these clowns would insult Mohammed?
missed opportunity
Friend who has never read a book: "Do you know about HITLER??"
The TDSers in the mass media invoke Trump in every domain. Their followers are obsessed. I am now in a retirement community in Central California and wouldn't dare put a Trump bumper sticker on my car for fear some octogenarian would vandalize it. Our next President, regardless of who it is, will be authoritarian. Their motivation will be very different. We are in deep shit.
I thought "Macbiden" would have been a great play -- even more to the point if the assassin actually had killed Trump. Some changes would have been needed, but a haunted usurper Macbiden and his devious wife Lady Macbiden would have been something to see on stage.
Was "King Lear" really about "political figure whose need for the continual propping up of his ego (and his retributive acts to members of his circle who don’t oblige)"? That's not how I remember it. Lear wants verbal affirmations of his daughters' love at the beginning of the play, but for most of it he's just a discarded old man without much opportunity for retribution. Lear as a lonely old man with no place to lay his head does conjure up Biden now, but he still has a house or two in Delaware.
The same thing happened in Maine, where I grew up in the early 60s. You could forecast the weather depending on which mill you were smelling; they were all nasty, but in a distinctly different way. The rivers were mostly dead, too. But all that has gone away now, thankfully. Unfortunately, so have the jobs.
Ms. Althouse, was the laughter coordinated enough to suggest there were audience shills, with prompt sheets?
"Let me wipe it first."
Shakespeare was not above an occasional "poop joke" to lighten the mood.
"it smells of mortality."
That Trump brought the attempt on his life on himself? How is that funny?
Not even TDS extraordinaire Sam Harris went there.
That Shakespeare, what a guy. Writing in the 1600s he knew that the bad orange man was coming and wrote about him. The anti-Trumpers here constantly accuse the pro Trump people as cult members, but is anyone as obsessed with Trump as his opponents? They see his shadow everywhere. Even in a 17th century play.
What explains the audience's reactions? TDS.
Narayanan: No. There is no benign reason for this.
"The audience busted out laughing at "Let me wipe it first." The hell! What explains that?!"
That is weird.
All the towns along the Wisconsin River where it left the pre-Cambrian shield and entered the Cambrian central sands had mills; Nekoosa, Rapids, Wausau, Mosinee (I think the Rapids and Wausau mills are closed). Big source of jobs back in the day. Nekoosa was farthest south. It was bad when the wind was from the north.
We drive past that string of towns a few miles to their east several times a year. You occasionally get a whiff. Kinda nostalgic, actually.
The Democrat Party elite Mobsters are just that - mobsters.
"Friend who has never read a book: "Do you know about HITLER??""
Well, that made me laugh.
Wave to the corrupt left who watch. Spy - like Russian and Chinese hacks. Fuck you - corrupt left. you can all fuck the fuck off.
Must-Watch, indeed. The corrupt mob left-wing democrat party can go to hell.
'The FBI is a police agency for the corrupt Democrat Party.'
With lbj much on my mind these days (immersed in Caro) the mention of "McBiden" as a play on Macbeth reminds me of the 1967 play "McBird" about lbj killing St Jack. (and then getting caught fucking jfk's throat wound on AF1)
Anyone else remember that?
John Henry
Sounds like meade had more actual pleasure yesterday. Ann gets more cred with the Madison deep thinkers, though.
John Henry
Very nice ceiling material over the stage. Suggests stained glass which give some majesty to the court scenes.
Did they do the stormy heath scene by projecting threatening shapes onto the material from above? Could be very dramatic (and cheap).
Break winds, crack thy cheeks.
"Ms. Althouse, was the laughter coordinated enough to suggest there were audience shills, with prompt sheets?"
All it would take is some laugh leaders who had the insight and readiness to laugh at anything that has a humorous dimension and for others to be laugh followers. It's often the case in a comedy that there are a few people, maybe only one person, who sees the humor first and is uninhibited enough to laugh out loud, and then others follow along. I myself am often the laugh leader in a theater, laughing before anyone else because I see the comedy first and it's uncanny how fast the rest of the room goes along, trusting my laugh to be the equivalent of a flashing "LAUGH" sign for a TV audience. But I wasn't laughing at this "King Lear." I was bothered by the laughers, because they didn't seem to be experiencing the tragedy at the same time.
It makes me think of one of my favorite movies, "Limelight," where -- SPOILER ALERT — the Charlie Chaplin character is onstage, performing his comedy, and he is actually dying, but the audience thinks it's clowning when he has a heart attack on stage.
King Lear is so damn funny.
Can't reply directly to MadTownGuy but your relative is probably right. Think of the paintings on the walls of buildings ( heh, the one wall was hit by lightning and collapsed. I wonder if that was God speaking.) and the statue someone erected of St. George of Houston and Fentanyl. Are there any statues or parks named after the Afghanistan 13? Not that I know of.
Speaking of a leader who abdicates all power to others, is Joe still breathing?
As Dick Shawn did.
Audiences laugh at inappropriate times in movies, too. When I saw Titanic the first time the audience burst out laughing when the guy jumps from the stern and hits the propeller on the way down- that is more inexplicable than laughing at that line in King Lear.
Like Althouse, I see more parallels with Biden than with Trump. Hillary and Kamala are obviously Goneril and Regan . Less obvious perhaps, but I would choose Nancy Pelosi for the Cordelia role. Many here will argue that she's old enough to be Methuselah's mother and couldn't be the Biden/Lear daughter, but here's my take. Cordelia is Misercordia. Misercordia is God's mercy. Like Cordelia it is distant and cold during man's moments of pride, but warm and embracing during man's moments of loss and despair. Misericordia is also the delicate knife that was used to penetrate the chink's in a knight's armor and give him an easeful death. Like Nancy Pelosi, Cordelia is as eternal as death and younger than springtime so it would be evocative to have an older woman, perhaps Vanessa Redgrave in the Pelosi part. She can wear a Palestinian prayer shawl to make it even more topical.......I can see a Trump figure playing Biden's fool: the only one in the crowd to tell Lear that he's a blighted old man. As to Gloucester's illegitimate son Edmund, there's such a wide variety of figures to choose to play the bastard. Many here will recommend someone with slicked back hair to play that role, but I'd like to see someone more like a Willie Brown figure to emphasize Goneril's illicit relationship with him. Done properly King Lear could be pro-Trump propaganda.
I can't keep straight which states have legalized marijuana (or even whether one should assume there is any enforcement in states that haven't), but that could be another explanation.
Narayan that makes no sense. Is there any evidence she attracts dangerous kooks? If so, shouldn't they be the ones being searched instead of her?
John Henry
Proof that Bacon didn't write Shakespeare's plays----Nostradamus did.
I will offer the view that King Lear can be seen as a dark comedy, if you see King Lear as getting what he deserves. And isn’t that the correct reading?
Per enotes:
“Lear has been living out in the open country for a long time. He is ragged and dirty, but still has some courtly manners. He is still concerned about how he looks and how he smells. Shakespeare intended this line, and the action that accompanies it, to get a laugh from his audience. Lear smells his own hand first and then wipes it on his rags. Everyone knows what he means when he says it smells of mortality" Lear smells his own excrement on his hand. He has been relieving himself out of doors as best he can, but hasn't been able to wash his hands afterwards. The implication is that he hates humanity by now and that the smell on his hand reminds him of his opinion of humanity, or mortality. This is why the audience would laugh. There is a lot of action to go with the line. Lear smells his hand first, then wipes it, then says it smells of mortality. The audience expects him to say it smells of something else first, but he pauses and considers, and then says "mortality" instead of a different (four-letter) word.”
I will offer the view that King Lear can be seen as a dark comedy, if you see King Lear as getting what he deserves. And isn’t that the correct reading?
Per enotes:
“Lear has been living out in the open country for a long time. He is ragged and dirty, but still has some courtly manners. He is still concerned about how he looks and how he smells. Shakespeare intended this line, and the action that accompanies it, to get a laugh from his audience. Lear smells his own hand first and then wipes it on his rags. Everyone knows what he means when he says it smells of mortality" Lear smells his own excrement on his hand. He has been relieving himself out of doors as best he can, but hasn't been able to wash his hands afterwards. The implication is that he hates humanity by now and that the smell on his hand reminds him of his opinion of humanity, or mortality. This is why the audience would laugh. There is a lot of action to go with the line. Lear smells his hand first, then wipes it, then says it smells of mortality. The audience expects him to say it smells of something else first, but he pauses and considers, and then says "mortality" instead of a different (four-letter) word.”
“Chris and I were seeing "King Lear," which may or may not have stirred up thoughts of Donald Trump (or the old man who did, like Lear, step down, Joe Biden)”
Yes, I would have thought of Biden. They should give Lear orange hair, so people don’t make that mistake.
These same democrat Party shitheads just loved, loved, looooved Obama and his bitchy, smug and condescending arrogance.
We had a copy of MacBird in our family bookshelf growing up in the 60's and 70's. I think I read it in 8th or 9th grade... I don't remember the necrophilia, bro.
No TP back then? Covid? Hand-washing criteria.
Georgetown, SC is about 20 minutes south of the pristine and glorious (and expensive) beaches of Pawleys Island, the southern end of the Grand Strand of Myrtle Beach.
Georgetown is a lovely old town, but it is als home to the Bowater paper mill.
95% of the time the prevailing winds blow the smell out to sea. The other 5% of the time it smells pretty bad.
Mad Town Guy--that's easy. There may be 12 people in the US over the age of 12 who never heard of George Floyd.
How many people can name any one of the 13 dead in Afghanistan?
Mad Town Guy--that's easy. There may be 12 people in the US over the age of 12 who never heard of George Floyd.
How many people can name any one of the 13 dead in Afghanistan?
I saw Buckaroo Banzai in Chapel Hill in 1984 or so. I was laughing out loud. Nobody else seemed to like it. Still one of the classics.
sanitary conditions were not optimum then
"What explains that?!"
Hubris.
Take away the pathos and what are you left with?
King Lear plays in polymath physicist Jacob Bronowski's terrific science-history video series (and book) The Ascent of Man (1973), about which the author had this to say: {quoting…}
Having this subtle view of human knowledge, {Karl Friedrich} Gauss was particularly bitter about philosophers who claimed that they had a road to knowledge more perfect than that of observation. Of many examples I will choose one. It happens that there is a philosopher called Friedrich Hegel, whom I must confess I specifically detest. And I am happy to share that profound feeling with a far greater man, Gauss.
In 1800 Hegel presented a thesis, if you please, proving that although the definition of planets had changed since the Ancients, there still could only be, philosophically, seven planets. Well, not only Gauss knew how to answer that: Shakespeare had answered that long before. There is a marvellous passage in King Lear, in which who else but the Fool says to the King: “The reason why the seuen Starres are no mo then seuen, is a pretty reason.” And the King wags sagely and says: “Because they are not eight.” And the Fool says: “Yes indeed, thou woulds't make a good Foole.” And so did Hegel. On 1 January 1801, punctually, before the ink was dry on Hegel's dissertation, an eighth planet was discovered—the minor planet Ceres.
{/unQuote}
(Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man, Little, Brown and Co., Boston, 1973; pp. 358-360)
Will no one relieve Us of this burdensome PoO?
Karma-la, Karma-la, wherefore art though, Karma-la? Deny thy Indian mother, deny thy Jamaican father. .. man, and you will no longer be Diverse.
Strike flat the thick rotundity of the world! said Joe Biden to the Mrs. upon being kicked in the nuts by the Dems
" The hell! What explains that?!" The extension of pre-adolesness well in to adult hood? Otherwise known as the Beavis & Butthead cohort.
OK, mea culpa, just noticed the misspelling of adolescence!
Didn't we have a long discussion of inappropriate laughter related to another politician?
The hell! What explains that?!
clap-clap "Wipers!"
--Coming to America
I grew up in Appleton and the mills there weren’t as pungent, but the mill in Kaukauna could get nasty. If the wind was from the east, it would get your attention. I remember that Mosinee mill as the worst, though.
"Born Yesterday" sounds more your speed.
Beautiful Savannah stank from pulp mills 40 years ago.
My town had a dog food plant next to our decaying downtown that smelt even upwind to my house. When they closed it in the 90s, giant rats invaded downtown.
And Red Foxx.
I can see Trump as Harry Brock
Not even a Sears catalog… sheesh!
Reading your headline, I thought of Barack Hussein Obama, who promised to fundamentally transform America, and at this point is more than halfway there. This chaotic, violent hateful America is so Progressive, it makes me sick.
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