My Kingdom for Some Air Conditioning

This weekend, I attended the closing performance of King Lear produced by the Richmond Shakespeare Festival. The program contained several pages of plot points to help if you do not speak Shakespeare. Had they asked, I could have assisted in condensing the summary as follows:

King Lear ruled over a kingdom with no air conditioning. He simply did not believe in it. This was probably due to a strong lobbying effort from the dry cleaning consortium, as the entire kingdom was extremely sweaty. Much heartache and tragedy resulted from the overheating of the country, including the descent into madness of the King himself. Even clothed in a loose fitting cotton nightgown and leaves, he was unable to retain his sanity in the heat. Most supporting characters also ended up dead from suicide, murder, or heat stroke.

I must say that the acting in this play was truly impressive. I actually believed that people were hot. In fact, in watching the show, I actually felt hot myself. I could have sworn that I myself was part of a sweltering kingdom. Brilliant!! Bravo!

For those of you lucky enough to catch the show, you might have seen my charming portrayal of "audience member in the fifth row." I interacted pre-show with The Fool. We chatted believably about the weather and my seat. I would suggest that you attempt to catch a future performance but unfortunately The Fool is dead and the show has closed. It is unfortunate that some of you missed my appearance, but trust me when I say that it was a truly draining role that I'm not sure I could easily repeat. On the upside, I lost several pounds of water weight at each performance. What ho, a silver lining!!