A contemporary feel to ‘King Lear’

Shakespeare is coming to the stage for the final week of the Lake Superior Theatre’s summer season.

The Westwood Shakespeare Company has been practicing King Lear since last fall.  It is a sixteen-member production that tells the story of a king in England who divides his land between two daughters and disowns a third daughter.

Audience members will notice that it is very similar to the popular TV series Game of Thrones, based on George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire epic fantasy series.

“And that’s because this is the basis for Game of Thrones, it’s where George R.R. Martin got the idea,” B.G. Bradley, who plays King Lear and adapted the script, said.  “To those people who are fans of Games of Thrones, it’s going to be very familiar, but this (King Lear) came before that, hundreds of years before that.”

Bradley said the production has a very contemporary feel, but still keeps the Elizabethan poetry from the original story.

“I think that people will see that Shakespeare remains contemporary,” he said.  “There are (themes) in here about homelessness, there are things in this about how we deal with our elderly, about war, about peace, about insanity…it’s all there.  All the things that we’re dealing with now are in ‘King Lear’, and stated in such as way that it’s poetry.”

King Lear premieres Tuesday night at the theater’s boathouse, and runs through Friday with shows at 7:30 p.m.

To buy tickets, visit the Lake Superior Theatre’s website, and for more information on the Westwood Shakespeare Company visit its Facebook page.