Why is Lear's Daughters Like a Live Cat in a Can of Soup?

The crowd, predominately comprised of English majors, both undergraduate and graduate, enters the theater all at once to find a sparse stage set and a girl in her early twenties sitting upstage. She's silent and still, slumped into an old wheelchair with an umbrella, and sporting an oxygen mask. The play begins with Lear's three daughter prattling on childishly to show their youth. This is Act 0 of King Lear. Goneril, as depicted in her youth, is bright and free, expressive (as are the other two sisters), and in love with painting. Regan is fragile and observant, in love with sculpting wood. Cordeila is spoiled, conceited, and in love with the written word. While the actresses' performances are well conceived and expressive, there is a severe disconnect between the characters that Shakespeare gives us and those of Elaine Feinsteine (Lear's Daughters).
Although I have not read King Lear for at least two years, I remember the basic outlines of the three daughters. Goneril and Regan, as well as their husbands, are harsh, cruel, plotting things that only desire power and money. While this is expressed a little in the play, when Goneril talks about sitting on her father's throne and daydreaming about being queen, Goneril is too fragile in the portrayl of her youth. Daddy issues take a new name in this twisted feminist play wrapped in avant-garde, as Lear's molestation of his daughters and the instant and lude replacement of their mother infects the stage. Cordelia is selfish and speaks in a childish voice, even as she grows older. Her life, in Lear's Daughters, is spent trying to please her father. This is most apparent in the sexualized "dance for daddy" scene, where a heavy young man in a bathrobe silently plays Lear as the fool speaks his lines, prompting Cordelia to dance for an audience. Some sort of poppy trance plays in the background as the audience cock their heads to the side in disbelief. Cordelia, in Shakespeare's Lear is faithful to familial ties, yet strong in her own convictions. She has honor, wit, and strength. I was mortified by her potrayal in Lear's Daughters and held my tongue for a while after leaving the theater until I was safely in a pub with a drink in my hand. I was enraptured with Shakespeare's Cordelia, and shocked that a feminist take on her childhood would take such sexist liberties in assuming that she was only good because her father coerced her to be so.
I understand the attempt to show the nurture argument of the girls, that Lear, in his cruelty and insanity, created the monsters that they became later in life, but then again, how could I not? The audience was beaten till numb with feminist critique and drowned in the essence of 80's avant-garde. If the play had been set in the 80's, with a brat-pack cast, it may have been less insulting to the original work that it was based on. Instead, I felt Shakespeare rising from the grave to convulse before painfully dying again. Modern ideologies cannot be so liberally applied to a work of art that was written four hundred years ago. A full grown cat cannot fit into a can of campbel's soup, and I prefer it that way. Feminism does not fit here; it has gone too far in this production, and shames my gender. To the avant-garde scene, wishing to force feed me political correctness gone awry: keep your hands off my Shakespeare.