King Lear at the Fountain of Youth

There’s a difference in the way Americans do mediocre Shakespeare and the way Brits do it. Ours tends to be easier to recognize for what it is. American acting training is heterogenous and feelings-forward; we still put a lot of stock in dubious Strasbergian notions of authenticity, and we’re scared of things above, beyond, and fundamentally opposed to realism. We tend to deflate the cosmic into the casual, making word salad while we’re at it. For the Brits...