This season, The Orlando Shakespeare Festival performed King Lear.  Shakespeare has been a long time favorite and for over 20 years and nearly a hundred performances has never failed to astound.  Whether it be at the Globe Theatre in London or at Anywhere college USA, the poignant themes and twisty sub-plots continue to appeal to modern audiences-a timeless testament to the bards genius. 

However, I am baffled by the many whom still shy away from Shakespeare, in fact the actors themselves joke that they will go broke if they continue to do only Shakespeare.  What many don’t realize is that King Lear, like all of the Bards plays, represent contemporary issues and societal complexities that are relevant today.  

If I can accomplish anything, it is to entice you to visit the Orlando Shakespeare Festival this season, which will include King Lear and the Merry Wives of Windsor.  

Experts consider King Lear to be Shakespeare’s finest,  if not original,  work.  Like all of Shakespeare, the interpretation of Lear and his 3 daughters, transcend time – it is a vivid and salient look into the inner workings of the human condition.  

 Lear is the story of an aged, powerful and successful monarch attempting to secure the future of his realm by dividing it up between his three daughters.  By staging an elaborate ceremony designed to elicit devoted and loving responses from all 3 daughters, Lear is disappointed only by his youngest and favorite-Cordelia who chooses to be brutally honest.    After a lamentable disinheritance, the resulting events drive Lear into a reckless, downward spiral.  Lear is faced with the duplicity of his 2 eldest daughters and comes too late to realize the abiding love & sincerity of his youngest.

 So how does the play illustrate today’s moral dilemmas?

 First, Lear is set in the classical good versus evil theme:  The good characters speak repeatedly about nature making us care about one another, and the evil characters about nature making us care only about ourselves.  This paradox is acutely evident through out 21^st century America, as we deal with the challenges of a hyper-marketed and media frenzied society and struggle to balance individualistic tendencies with communal needs.

 Lear is a journey of adult self-re-discovery.   The once invincible war-lord (cut in here---financially successful American power broker) facing his mortality,   has for the first time encountered the cold fact that his two eldest children have become ungrateful, selfish adults.  Lear willingly becomes dependent on their goodwill and finds himself utterly exposed to their whims and quite literally to the bitter elements of nature.  Lear’s tribulations finally lead him to understand and appreciate what lies beneath the polished veneers of himself and of his children.

 Lastly King Lear is a story about human dynamics and examines the child--parent relationship, so common in our society, where the children must inevitably care for their aging and sometimes addlepated parents.   The story of King Lear leads one to sharply question the decision to hand over control to those seemingly trustworthy.  It violently illustrates the disastrous consequences of familial unrest which can lead to the ultimate civil strife.

 The story of King Lear is not for the faint of heart, it has the most violent ending in all of Shakespeare.   It is a story of chaos and of betrayel, of literal madness and metaphorical blindness and ultimately it is a story about reconciliation and justice. 

 If you have a Friday night free and lack for quality cinema, the UCF Orlando Shakespeare Festival continues to impress audiences with inspiring performances of renaissance literature.