KING LEAR: A Kitchen Table Meditation by Edward Petherbridge

In the summer of 2007, Edward Petherbridge travelled to New Zealand to play King Lear on stage, but fell ill after the first rehearsal.  The role had to be recast and the world therefore still awaits his Lear . . .

In the meantime, we can offer a tiny but tantalizing glimpse of what might have been in is this multi-media presentation, recorded exclusively for our inaugural “Shakespeare Week”.  (With apologies to everyone who still has a  dial-up connection.)

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~~~:o:~~~

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Postscript from EP –  17.11.10:

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Whilst filming in Budapest recently, I photographed this statue.

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The nymph trying to lay a laurel wreath on the hero’s head strikes me as how Lear sees himself in the first scene. This aggrandizement of the dead hero is the kind of monument Lear is in search of while he’s living and the reason he initiates the rigged competition between his daughters: ‘Which of you shall we say doth love us most?’

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© Edward Petherbridge. 2010.