Kenneth Branagh will direct and play the title role for 50 performances only at Wyndham’s Theatre from 21 October.
Branagh’s vision is undeniably there, but the execution lacks directorial precision. Nobody doubts his capability as a performer or as a director (see his recent Oscar winning film Belfast). But doing both at the same time does the cast no favours.
This is a bare-bones Lear – stripped of much of its weird cosmic poetry and shorn too of much of its complexity. The claustrophobic intimacy suits a reading that is fiercely attuned to the domestic and familial chaos at the play’s heart and the central crisis of Lear’s relationship with Jessica Revell’s single-minded Cordelia. It is less suited to the play’s restless sense of the epic and universal scope.
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