1.3: Stew and Spaghetti

After spending the evening blocking 1.3, I must confess I'm actually glad I didn't have the knights to contend with as well. Even without them, it's a huge scene, exploding with quickie entrances and exits and bristling with status wars.

The first struggle, between Oswald and Lear, was smooth and relatively simple. By now, Marsha (as Oswald) is more than accustomed to being shoved, tripped, insulted and threatened. Lear spends the first page and a half shouting for dinner, so I thought maybe we'd give him some stew or something, for his troubles. And then, when he gets really mad at Oswald, he can chuck it onto the floor. (Protracted groaning from my stage manager)

Then Oswald is hustled out and the Fool dances in. This is the first time I've really had a chance to work with Tatyana (as the Fool). She's super, radiating bouncy energy and a twinkly-eyed mischeviousness as she pushes Lear's buttons. But we had to hustle through the blocking a bit, because I wanted to get to the next big confrontation: Lear vs. Goneril.

Beverly knows what she's doing. I still want to see more of what's at stake for this daughter--the terror and maybe the exhiliration of standing up to her patriarchal father for the first time in her life--but she's definitely got the "standing up" part down. She's a tower of authority onstage, and Dale (as Lear) is working like a dog to keep up with her. But he does, and the scene is positively electric. We didn't finish blocking this unit either, but we did discover some marvellous multi-cross moments that look like spaghetti tangles but flow like quicksilver.

At the tail end of the scene, there's a momentary struggle between Albany and Goneril. Here, Allan chose a surprising tactic, giving Albany a bit of an aggressive edge. It's kind of neat to see Goneril, who has gone up against "the dragon" Lear and won, be momentarily disarmed by her "milk-livered" husband. Just goes to show you, you never know where the next challenge will come from.