I was recently surprised to discover that King Lear is a common subplot in a number of spoofs and remakes, modernized films/series. I suspect that like MacBeth, with King Lear, Shakespeare captured a series of classic tropes in a way that worked better than anything before or since.
There aren't romantic couples in King Lear, not really. The bad sisters fight over Edmund, who is the ultimate charismatic bad boy. Cordelia's husband seems to like her, but we don't see them on stage together much--until Cordelia's death.
The most sustained relationship is between Lear and the Fool.
The comic-actress Melora Hardin as Madelyn in If I Were You is trying to figure out if her cheating husband truly loves her and if she truly loves him. Madelyn befriends the young woman who is having an affair with her husband; that young woman ends up playing the Fool in a local repertory version of Lear while Madelyn ends up as a female Lear. Her hunt for affirmation provides a different perspective on the titular character's anguish. Lear is looking for love in all parts of his life, and that hunt, like rage, is entirely overwhelming (and even destructive).
Hardin and Quinn have great chemistry. However, in terms of great loves, the frame story brings the audience back not to the marriage or the boyfriend but to Lear and the Fool. The ultimate point?
The theater--the relationships within the theater--outlast everything.
I think Shakespeare would have approved.
