It\u2019s hard to go wrong updating Shakespeare.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s been adapted into everything from Broadway musicals and comic books to gritty TV dramas and the occasional porno flick. Aside from a few specifics that are locked into certain plays (e.g., Othello should always be played by a Black man), his work has proven wonderfully malleable to adaptors for nearly half a millennium. Still, there remain some rules to which one must abide if they want to make the piece their own. Chief amongst those rules is that you either stick to the poet\u2019s words or not, you can\u2019t go halfway.<\/p>\n
That last point seems to have gone by Oakland Theater Project co-founder Michael Socrates Moran. His company is presenting a new adaptation of \u201cKing Lear,\u201d which Moran himself directed. If there\u2019s anything one can take away from the production, it\u2019s that the director seems to have an utter disdain for Shakespeare\u2019s original dialogue, injecting several modern lines to go along with the new contemporary setting. If there\u2019s another thing to take away, it\u2019s the question of \u201cWhy go big when you can go even bigger?\u201d<\/p>\n
Like Shakespeare\u2019s best works, \u201cKing Lear\u201d is considered both one of his strongest plays and one of the greatest gifts the English language has ever received. It\u2019s the tale of the eponymous king (played here by J Jha) choosing to bestow his inheritance to his heirs while he\u2019s still breathing. His greedy older daughters, Goneril (played with a wonderfully conniving air by Sarah Kasuga) and Regan (played by Natalie Pasquinelli as a ditzy, gum-chewing socialite) are happy to take their share, if not more. But beloved youngest daughter Cordelia (Dina Zarif, given shockingly little to do) wants nothing. Offended, the king banishes her.<\/p>\n
As that\u2019s going on, the conniving Edmund (Dean Linnard) plots against his brother Edgar (Tyler Aguallo), forcing the latter to self-banish, lest he face the wrath of the people. Edmund has plans to move up in the world, no matter how many people have to die or how many eyes his father, the Earl of Gloucester (David Sinaiko) has to lose.<\/p>\n
Moran clearly fancies Edmund as the main character. This show sets this tone in the worst possible way from the start, with an in-character Linnard interrupting Moran\u2019s curtain speech. This obnoxious rich-boy \u201cDJ\u201d breaks the fourth wall to tell us of his disdain for Shakespearean verse and his love for himself above others. We\u2019re supposed to find this appealing. Your mileage may vary. Just know that his loud, atonal delivery is how the rest of the show will play out.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s not a joke: despite every actor being mic\u2019d, all the lines are shouted at top volume for the entire three-hour run time. As mentioned, the iambic rhythm of the original verse is discarded as if it were just getting in the way. Added to that, several of the lines have moments of silence thrown in just to stretch scenes out even longer. If J Jha finished the run without needing to be hospitalized for laryngitis, I\u2019ll be very surprised.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a shame, because there\u2019s quite a lot that could have been with the resources on hand. Set designer Sam Fehr re-imagined San Francisco\u2019s Z Space (this being the rare OTP show to leave Oakland) as a gorgeous meditation area with a giant Zen garden occupying most of the floor. The\u00a0 upstage wall is a projection screen that shows an in-progress solar eclipse. It also shows promotional materials of most of the main characters, with the king practically getting a Hollywood-style trailer before his first appearance. This all could have been a perfect way to explore classic ideas of unchecked power in the context of modern oligarchs and warlords. It\u2019s as if the crew and most of the cast showed up to make a production about the evils of the 1% and how there\u2019s only one way for their reigns to end.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, that\u2019s not the show Michael Moran wanted to make. He wanted to make a cacophony of chaos, a three-hour show with the volume cranked up as high as it can go, with the intermissions acting as little relief. OTP specializes in its experimental work, but their production of \u201cLear\u201d has a much to do with the original text as Andy Warhol\u2019s \u201cVinyl\u201d had to do with Burgess\u2019 \u201cA Clockwork Orange.\u201d Moran didn\u2019t need to take the Renaissance Faire route and have performers in tights, but their 2026 season has been \u201cLand of the Free.\u201d<\/p>\n
This text provided ample opportunity to address that theme and be experimental. Instead, it settles for noise.<\/p>\n
\u2018KING LEAR\u2019<\/p>\n
By William Shakespeare, presented by Oakland Theater Project<\/p>\n
Through: Oct. 11<\/p>\n
Where: Z Space, 450 Florida St., San Francisco<\/p>\n
Running time: 3 hours, with two 10-minute intermissions<\/p>\n