La Mama
Presents
Cordelia, Mein
Kind
July 16 – July 20 2014
Concept/Co-Creator/Film
and Performer: Debroah Leiser-Moore
Co-Creator/Director
Meredith Rogers
Choreographer:
Sally Smith
Stage manager and
lighting by Hayley Fox
Cordelia, Mein Kind is a well-honed, tightly woven, one-woman performance
that responds to the subjective questioning most women surely do, as daughters,
when watching or thinking about the Father/Daughter relationship in
Shakespeare’s King Lear. As such it is very moving and satisfying
amalgam of skilled performer working with multi –media to touch on some
poignant and elusive truths about many things including identity and culture
that relate to heritage.
The work has
several ‘frames’ one being extensive film footage of Debroah’s father, another
a Yiddish film adaption of King Lear,
as well as a glorious audio recording of Paul Scofield performing excerpts from
the text of the play.
Nothing is out of
place and Debroah’s Suzuki trained, fit and strong body serves this work
beautifully as does Meredith Rogers’s perceptive and acute Direction.
Cordelia’s
reticence to vehemently express her love for her father, as her sisters’ had
done when questioned by him, is explored. And at the very heart of this work
are some of Leiser-Moore’s reasons for not speaking to her own father of her
love for him. At least I this is
partially how I perceived what I was experiencing as I was also dwelling on my
own relationship to my father.
Both as a journey about
the experience of being a very loving daughter and a gutsy expression by a
wonderfully seasoned Theatre Maker this work is unique, empowering and totally
worth catching.
Suzanne Sandow
(For Stage Whispers)
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