SOURCE: Barrow, Craig. “The 2000 Alabama Shakespeare Festival's King Lear.” Upstart Crow 20 (2000): 179-83.

In the following review, Barrow contends that “of all the productions of King Lear done by the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, the 2000 production was the weakest.” In particular, the critic faults Barry Boys's performance as Lear, noting that the actor was “unable to communicate Lear's painful journey through madness to wisdom.”

The day after King Lear opened at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Kent Thompson, the Alabama Shakespeare Festival's Artistic Director and the director of King Lear, gave a lecture in the Theatre of the Mind series on his experience directing the play in 1992 and for this season. Since I was going to see the play later that day and had seen and reviewed Thompson's 1992 King Lear as well as all previous productions of King Lear that the ASF had done, I was curious about what he thought...