Review: Theater 2020's "King Lear" Storms Brooklyn

King Lear

Written by William Shakespeare

Directed by Judith Jarosz 

Presented by Theater 2020 at The Great Room at A.R.T./New York studios

138 South Oxford Street, Brooklyn, NYC

June 12-29, 2025

L to R: Declan Hutcheon as Edgar, David Fuller at King Lear, & David Arthur Bachrach as The Fool. Photo by John Hoffman
Power, aging, family dynamics—perennially-relevant topics and ones which Theater 2020’s astutely-acted production of King Lear presents in a fresh and compelling way. With the set comprised of just a few stools, one containing the crown Lear divests himself of during the play’s opening scene, an ever-present reminder of the stakes of this family feud, the production’s versatile, dynamic, talented cast creates a captivating new portrayal of this classic tale’s exploration of the relationship among power, authority, and legitimacy. 

David Fuller’s Lear leads the cast with a truly dazzling portray of the titular Lear, fully capturing the character’s capricious, easily flattered, and volatile nature and making huge emotional swings, often within the same scene, believable. James Carlos Lacey stands out in the role of the bastard Edmund, playing to the audience in a way that is so winning that it is not hard to understand how both Goneril and Regan become enamored with him. Moreover, he adds a nuance and inflection to the delivery of his lines that makes them thoroughly legible while also showing how self-aware and cunning the character is. 

Disguise is a prominent motif in the play in both the characters of Kent and Edgar. Eileen Glenn’s cross-gendered Kent has both the courage to stand up to Lear when he banishes Cordelia and the loyalty to return to court in disguise to stand by her king, which she embodies through mastery of an accent shift in the play. Similarly, Declan Hutcheon as Edgar shifts multiple times in the play, shifts which are also encapsulated by easily distinguished accents as well as, in the case of the beggar Poor Tom, a physicality that adapts itself whether or not he is in the presence of seeing characters. 

With the cast consistently strong throughout the play, a number of scenes are especially powerful. Lear on the heath during the storm is always horrifying evidence of Goneril and Regan’s betrayal of family, and the startlingly loud sound effects really underscore the distress and disorientation of this moment. The blinding of Gloucester (Michael Gnat) is equally compelling in the way the horror is laid bare, and the scene is stunning for its emotional impact even without any stage blood or gore. Likewise, the fight between Edmund and Edgar captures the impact of the scene without the gratuitous carrying on that sometimes characterizes stage fighting.

Overall, the cast of Theater 2020’s King Lear presents this classic tale with startling freshness, truly making the case for the value of revisiting old tales with a new perspective. What legitimizes power, how far some are willing to go to grasp it, and who suffers in the process—clearly these are themes that resonate just as much today as they ever have.

-Stephanie Pietros

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