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Lost Lear

(Matt Smyth, Riverbank Arts Centre and Mermaid Arts Centre)
Traverse Theatre (Traverse 1)
27 Jul, 2, 3, 5–10 Aug, 12–17 Aug, 19–24 Aug various
Theatre

A moving and darkly comic remix of Shakespeare’s play told from the point of view of Joy, a person with dementia who is living in an old memory of rehearsing King Lear. Joy’s delicately maintained reality is upended by the arrival of her estranged son who, being cast as Cordelia must find a way to speak his piece from within the limited role he’s given. Using puppetry, projection and live video effects, the audience are landed in Joy’s world as layers of her past and present, fiction and reality, overlap and distort. A thought-provoking meditation on theatre.