Lear

Edward Bond's Lear reimagines Shakespeare's king as a paranoid dictator building a wall to keep out enemies, whose daughters rebel, leading to war, his imprisonment, blinding, and eventual prophetic journey to dismantle the wall, offering a stark political allegory about power, violence, and corrupted morality in unjust societies, focusing on systemic oppression rather than personal tragedy. Bond transforms the narrative into a brutal, realistic critique of power structures, where Lear's journey from autocrat to enlightened figure reveals the destructive nature of authority and the hope found in active resistance, even leading to his sacrificial death.