The Promised End at Source Theater

No, I'm not reporting the demise of the Source Theater on 14th Street. This was an IN Series production presented there which we took in last Saturday night. You might say that it was an interesting idea to combine Shakespeare's King Lear with Verdi's Requiem. As it turned out, the Requiem fared better, in my view, than Lear. 

The stage was a group of chairs and benches, with vertical rods running down the middle across the stage. There were eight singers--four men and four women--all with excellent voices covering the full range. There's also a narrator who also plays the parts of both Verdi and Lear at various times, mostly from a simple reading stand more than a lectern.

The singing is superb. The lower men's voices, bass and baritone in particular, added beauty to the performance of the Requiem that the eight singers carry on throughout the performance. The women singers were equally excellent. The narrator, played by Nanna Ingvarsson, projected a commanding figure but had the most difficult role because her task included telling something about the lives of both Verdi and Shakespeare, as well as tying the music to the words of the play, King Lear.

Ingvarsson was often overwhelmed by the sound of eight opera singers going all out. She was able to portray in some fashion the great dramatic points in Lear, which is often described as the peak of Shakespeare's output. Much of her presentation, however, was lost amid the huge sound of the Requiem singers and accompaniment. The performance early on emphasized Verdi's life and career, including singing from offstage of his famous chorus of the Hebrew slaves in Babylon, Va Pensiero, from Nabucco, which became the Italian national anthem.

To me, this was an example of "seemed like a good idea at the time" although I found the fine singing of the Requiem was enthralling. I've seen Lear performed as its own play and will attest to its greatness, but it is not in any way nor should it be a light three hours at the theater. This production ran for about 80 minutes and there was effusive applause at the end, for the singers, who were wonderful, and for the narrator, perhaps because of the superhuman task she was set and attempted bravely to accomplish.