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| Karen Magid, Frank Kopyc, Anna Gianiotis. |
What? You didn’t know someone had turned King Lear into a musical? Perhaps that’s
because it didn’t stick around long enough to make its presence known. A single
performance and the old man died for good. Pop was, after all, an awful show that
Clive Barnes said he “writhed” through. “It was a living testimony to the dictum that
there is no stopping a lack of talent if it is given an even break.”
Lear, first produced in the Midwest, was a DOA attempt at anti-Nixon satire (we can anticipate countless such shows inspired by you-know-who, and I don’t mean Lincoln). It included in its grab bag “a tasteless parody of the shooting of the students at Kent State University,” said Barnes. There was little to laugh at. An idea of the level of wit is suggested by the names of some characters: Learsenpower (Frank Kopyc), Gonerilla (Anna Gianiotis), Cindelia (Lois Greco), Ignoreagan (Karen Magid), and Cornwallass (T. Galen Girvin).
Of the music, Barnes said it at least “teetered on the brink of
the mediocre.” “Utterly nonsensical,” “infantile,” and “ridiculous” were among
the grace notes emanating from Douglas Watt’s report.