Girls, I Just LOVE Goneril and Regan!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                            What with "King Lear" getting ready for public performances this coming Tuesday--July 22--at the Delacorte, featuring John Lithgow as the titled patriarch, and Annette Benning and Jessica Hecht as those fun-loving sisters, Goneril and Regan, there is much for a theatergoer like me to anticipate.  First, I love the play, because so many of our individual family dynamics hearken back to it--I can personally testify to that, darlings!!!!!!!--and second, because I just LOVE Goneril and Regan.  In fact, I actually think they have been given a raw deal!   They are just a pair of victimized wounded birds, and I just cannot WAIT to see what the brilliant Jessica Hecht will do with Regan!!!!!!!!!!

                                  Regan--in both "King Lear" and "The Exorcist"--is a role I have had my eyes on for a long time.  Maybe, in this staging, Shakespeare's Regan will do the Spider Walk from "The Exorcist!"

                                   But to understand why I feel the way I do about these siblings, whom most would consider two of the most evil bitches of all time--and it's true I just LOVE evil bitches!!!!!!!!--you have to go back to 'Lear's' contemporary equivalent, Jane Smiley's 1991 novel, "A Thousand Acres," and the vastly underrated 1997 movie made from it, where the sisters were played by Jessica Lange (Goneril.Ginny) and Michelle Pfeiffer (Regan/Rose); the latter giving such an impassioned performance I was appalled she was not Oscar nominated, and it made me wake up, and notice her as an actress!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                   Both the play and its counterpart have storm scenes. But the storm scene in "A Thousand Acres" (which I wish I could bring to you, darlings) is so gloriously florid and hateful, because you see how hateful a man Larry Cook (the Lear here, brilliantly played by Jason Robards) really is.  The sisters are justified, at this moment, for throwing him out into the storm, and when Rose says, "I hope he dies in it!," I shared her sentiment, because Larry Clark is just one-step removed from my white trash Uncle Bill--a lout who beat his wife and (herein) was a sexual predator with his two daughters.  It is easy to see why this is a motherless household; the mother either walked out, or the heartache of being saddled to such a bastard killed her!  So, Smiley's Lear deserves every rotten thing he gets!

                                    And it is great to watch him get it! Just like it is great to watch this Goneril and Regan play him to a vengeful fare thee well!  Revenge has never been so sweet, here!

                                       Jennifer Jason Leigh, in a small role, plays the Cordelia of the piece, Caroline, who comes to her father's aid, not realizing, or willing to  accept, the sacrifices Ginny and Rose made by getting her out of the house at an early enough age before Larry could lay a hand on her, too!  These two sisters had good intentions, but get rebuffed by both father and sibling. No wonder I love these bitches!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                        "A Thousand Acres" is full of one conflict after another! Here is a very brief example!  I cannot wait to see "King Lear" and I cannot wait to see this again, as well!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                          You just GOTTA love Goneril and Regan, darlings!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                            Hey, how about if Jodi Arias and Lindsay Lohan played them??????????????