Second Age King Lear

The Second Age production of our V form single text, King Lear, is reviewed today by Sara Keating in the Irish Times here, after its opening at the Wexford Opera House. All our V form will be seeing the production at the Helix Theatre on March 20th.

She writes :- Second Age Theatre’s latest production for secondary school audiences is a stylish, energetic and unconventional King Lear. Directed by Donnacadh O’Briain, it offers a coherent vision of Shakespeare’s characters and themes, while avoiding the easy clichés associated with the canonical tragedy: there is not a white beard in sight.

The proceedings begin with the ritual beat of a drum, the resonant oilcan-echo silencing the cavernous auditorium of Wexford’s Opera House. Michael Vale’s industrial scaffolded design evokes a factory setting. Lear’s kingdom might well be a manufacturing one, but as the play proceeds and the bodies pile up it begins to resemble an abattoir.