The Brooklyn Academy of Music hosted the Donmar Warehouse's recent production of King Lear, and this was probably the strongest staging of Shakespeare's masterpiece I've yet seen. Derek Jacobi was a formidable Lear and the actresses portraying Goneril and Regan were especially strong too, bringing out colors in these roles I had not seen before. The scene in which Gloucester has his eyes plucked out was never more violent than in this performance, though it worked well in context. The set was appropriately spare and all the production values seemed to click. A terrific night at the theater (and I was able to bring two students from "Shakespeare And The Death Of Kings," the senior English elective I am currently teaching).
