Ms. Lear

“Lear,” by the Irish choreographer John Scott and the veteran dancer Valda Setterfield, is a streamlined version of Shakespeare’s play. It has only four dancers, King Lear and his daughters. Plus, the daughters are played by men, and Lear is a woman, Setterfield. What does cross-sex casting do for a show? The most obvious consequence, it seems to me, is what the Russian literary theorist Viktor Shklovsky called “defamiliarization.” That is, it shakes us up, lets us see the play anew, not just as that old thing. When I presented this idea to Scott and Setterfield, they both said yes, yes, of course, but that their show was not about men or women but just about parents and children.