Lear has had enough. He wants to keep his crown, but he has decided to divide his kingdom among his daughters. It’s about time he started a peaceful old age.

And so he casually asks his ‘dearly beloved’ how much they love him. Their answer is ‘sweet’, ‘sweeter’ and ‘unsweetened’. That very same day, Lear finds out how quickly a heart can be trampled.

Crude (Ongelikt) - King Lear is a piece about children and their parents. About intolerable fathers, absent mothers, ambitious sons and daughters with ants in their pants. They all want to take fate in their own hands. Freedom is easily confused with power and wealth makes people thoughtless and worse: friendship is betrayed and blood ties are simply ignored. But none can escape their destiny. The future is written in the stars and it’s not exactly golden.

King Lear is considered Shakespeare’s richest creation. After the great success of De Karamazovs, his first production for the large theatres, Jo Roets, Laika’s artistic director, selected this masterpiece for a co-production with HETPALEIS. Bart Moeyaert was asked to adapt this story of a family that falls apart and an old man who loses all his certainties for a young audience.