King Lear (play review)

Talk about taking a play to heart!

Johnny Stallings enthralled us last night for a marathon performance of King Lear. He played all the parts -- a one man show. Sometimes one character might be prone or kneeling, another standing; he'd be back and forth without missing a beat, or a breath. Then, as earnest narrator, he'd break in and deftly bring us up to speed on background details, covert operations.

I'd never fully grasped the plot until Stallings laid it bare.

Plus he chatted amiably with the audience both before and after (after we'd snapped out of it and stopped sitting dumbstruck). There was no "off stage" in this scenario. His young assistant sold tickets at the door and ran the lights.

Brooklyn Bay, 1825 SE Franklin. Fridays and Saturdays through October.

I liked this space too, for its starkness and its industrial obscurity. Might be a good space to rent for a recruiting event some evening, complete with a 2K lumens projector (was eying them at Fry's on Friday) and a stellar audio system. I could roll up in my BizMo and give some mind-blowing overview.

Speaking of overview, another fun movie is Warriors of the Net, which I showed on my home network to my daughter and neighbor friend earlier last night. A simple cartoon about TCP/IP, but with pretty good production values.

Today, we went rollerskating. I'm terrible, but improved considerably in the 90 minutes I allotted myself.