Description
An aging Queen Lear decides to divide her kingdom between her three daughters. A rage derails the proceedings, and Lear banishes her youngest daughter and her own trusted advisor. In so doing, she sets a course for the dissolution of her family, the brutality of grudges, the deterioration of sanity, and festination towards war. In the shadows, the bastard Edmund schemes to take his place in an unforgiving world.
There is a fatalism to the cruelties we see in the tragedy of Lear. Edmund could no more escape the circumstances of his birth than Lear could prevent her neurologic illness. But we have continual choice to correct the course of our darker impulses, to rein in our violence, our resentment, and our greed. Lear is a story of what happens when we abandon our kindness and our empathy, which asks us to consider how we wield these in our own lives.
Content warnings:
Flashing lights and sounds
Scenes of graphic violence
Themes of sex and violence
