Susanna Hamnett, who is trained as a clown, is playing, kind of, King Lear this weekend at the Drake Center. Kind of. The show’s called Nearly Lear, and it’s kind of a mash-up of video, performance art and a smattering of the original play. Hamnett plays it from the Fool’s perspective, which makes a good amount of sense, and shrinks it down to ninety minutes, which is about at the outer limit of the current human attention span and so, also, makes a good amount of sense. And Susanna Hamnett gets laughs during this show, which is, again, based around King Lear, which is one of the most depressing and tragic things ever written. How does Susanna Hamnett do that? Go to the Drake Center Friday and find out how Susanna Hamnett does that. (Michele Lemmon, Columbus Dispatch)