One wrinkle would be a kind of theoretical question: is a performance of Lear more like playing a symphony, where the concert is theoretically guided by and true to what's in the sheet music, or more like a film/tv/etc. adaptation of the play?
Even today, centuries after Tate, we don't perform Shakespeare literally as written. Hamlet is usually cut down, the Hecate scene in Macbeth is usually not performed, etc. Furthermore, we certainly don't perform Shakespeare according to Elizabethan/Jacobean performance practices; the women are played by women and not by boys in drag.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm not sure.
I share some of your doubts, but I think your analogy is wrong. Tate's rewrites are the equivalent of changing the score so that a classical piece becomes romantic, or a symphony a concerto, or something tonal to atonal, etc etc. Making cuts to the script not the same sort of interference. Interpretive performances are part and parcel of theatre and a different thing altogether. All plays are performed differently with every revival and are intended to be. That's the nature of acting. But you cannot turn Lear into a tragicomedy without rewriting it.
What Tate did was to not quite write his own play; Shakespeare on the other hand took previous versions and made his own new thing. The Dahl people didn't want to go that far, of course. Once he's out of copyright people might, as they do with Wodehouse, Bond, Austen, etc.
I would also note that musical performances can be *hugely* interpretive---see Glenn Gould!
One wrinkle would be a kind of theoretical question: is a performance of Lear more like playing a symphony, where the concert is theoretically guided by and true to what's in the sheet music, or more like a film/tv/etc. adaptation of the play?
Even today, centuries after Tate, we don't perform Shakespeare literally as written. Hamlet is usually cut down, the Hecate scene in Macbeth is usually not performed, etc. Furthermore, we certainly don't perform Shakespeare according to Elizabethan/Jacobean performance practices; the women are played by women and not by boys in drag.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm not sure.
I share some of your doubts, but I think your analogy is wrong. Tate's rewrites are the equivalent of changing the score so that a classical piece becomes romantic, or a symphony a concerto, or something tonal to atonal, etc etc. Making cuts to the script not the same sort of interference. Interpretive performances are part and parcel of theatre and a different thing altogether. All plays are performed differently with every revival and are intended to be. That's the nature of acting. But you cannot turn Lear into a tragicomedy without rewriting it.
What Tate did was to not quite write his own play; Shakespeare on the other hand took previous versions and made his own new thing. The Dahl people didn't want to go that far, of course. Once he's out of copyright people might, as they do with Wodehouse, Bond, Austen, etc.
I would also note that musical performances can be *hugely* interpretive---see Glenn Gould!