King Lear (Needcompany)

Belgian-Flemish director Jan Lauwers opens his decidedly deconstructionist King Lear with a vigorous postmodern dance, as his international ensemble (winners of an Obie award for Needcompany’s 1999 Next Wave debut, Morning Song) move Shakespeare?s engrossing play from a seventeenth-century English castle to the contemporary world stage. Surtitles translate the Flemish text—a practical necessity during the final act when blaring rock music and jolting sounds of war obliterate the words.