Playbill.com: Tony Award winner Bill Irwin, the famed American clown, discusses the challenge and joy of playing King Lear's Fool, the foul-weather friend of Shakespeare's famous broken monarch, now at the Public Theater.
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Bill Irwin Talks About the History and Mystery of the Fool's Gold of Lear
Playbill.com: Tony Award winner Bill Irwin, the famed American clown, discusses the challenge and joy of playing King Lear's Fool, the foul-weather friend of Shakespeare's famous broken monarch, now at the Public Theater.
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2 comments:
Like the author here, my first thought was, "Of course Bill Irwin is playing The Fool. Why didn't someone think of that years ago?" What DID surprise me a little is that Sam Waterston is playing Lear himself. That aside, The Fool has some of the hardest lines in Lear to make sense of, to my mind. Clown characters were often the groundlings' link into a play. He spoke to them directly, he spoke their language, in their cadences and made jokes they could understand and enjoy. Many of The Fool's lines are specific to Elizabethan audiences and lore of that time period; making some of those lines make sense to a modern audience [regardless of whether or not the production itself is modern or period] is a very real challenge.
I was heartened to hear so many people praise Irwin's verbal ability as well as his physical to perform this roll.
Agree with Jacob. When Irwin was younger he performed a series of short clown pieces called Clown Bagatelles. Two of those are Irwin poking fun of the prestige of Shakespeare, specifically, King Lear. So it makes a little bit of sense that America's best clown will tackle Shakespeare's most difficult clown.
I was the assistant to the director for PICTS production of King Lear a few years ago. The play is complex and extremely difficult. The fool is no exception. If Lear is one of the hardest parts to play in the theater (you need a very old guy who still has it, or someone who can act very old) then Lear's fool is the second hardest part.
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