Chance = Change

Once again, showing us how it must be done, The Royal Shakespeare Company, right here in their London season at the Alberry Theatre , refreshed my committment to the art of acting! We sat through a 4-hour KING LEAR that felt like a mere 2 hours, and Corin Redgrave and company had me in tears of heartbreak by the final curtain. It was deeply important for me to be reminded in that visceral way of what the "real thing" is : actors at the top of their forms, vocally and emotionally thorough, committed, revved and warm, there 100 % to give life to a work of art written 400 years ago! A work of theater writing that defies the ages, as it continues to live and breathe the air of real life tragedies right back in our modern faces!!! I once again, as when I was a child seeing theatre with my Momma, did not want to leave the theatre after the final curtain rang down...but neither did I want to run away with that particular circus, as I used to want to do before I had had years of my own work experience ...no, I wanted to sit and think and feel...I wanted to sit and be reverent and quiet in the face of life's overwhelming horrible beauty. That a man could write words that enable us to experience the complexity of it all: no pre-digested talk show pap, giving us the "truth" of people behaving badly, no...but rather the event, the true event of human lives at the mercy of the winds of fate and that most terrible thing of all, our own emotional wills! The Greeks really did have it right: we are filled with that particular hubris that makes us think we are gods...I think that is why we believe we can behave towards each other the way we do...Lear, a most foolish man...and finally a most wonderfully heartbreaking and wonderfilled one. What a night in the theatre. Tonight, we see Patrick Stewart in A LIFE IN THE THEATRE. yesterday afternoon, we saw Penelope Kieth in BLITHE SPIRIT. what more can I say...except...well...this is a great time to be in London.