King Lear

The reading was awful. While some of the readers were good, others were outright horrible. Be it Edmund's constant sighing and affecting the middle school "villain persona" of Jesse Eisenberg, the fool annunciating like a man who's learning to repress a speech impedement, and acting like he's trying to repress a developmental one, and named male characters being played by highly effeminate sounding women when being male is a big part of their character, this reading couldn't do any worse. It's a shame, because Lear and Cordilia are actually quite good. In short, it's a horrible listen. On a relatively minor note as well, the stage directions are misplaced in several instances.

I am a huge fan of open source / collaborative everything, and love the idea of Librevox, but I've yet to hear a good reading of anything in their recordings. And this is no exception. Sorry, but Shakespeare just doesn't work unless the performers have both thought through the lines at length and deliver them with the appropriate sense and feeling. Otherwise, every play becomes a modern farce of our own making...

It's always amazing to listen audio with text :)

Nicccc