Kenneth Branagh will direct and play the title role for 50 performances only at Wyndham’s Theatre from 21 October.
Branagh’s central performance is ultimately, and surprisingly, underwhelming in its psychologically discontinuous presentation of Lear. Like many in the cast, he either overaccentuates or underpitches his delivery, vacillating between extremes of emotion without fully inhabiting the part’s profound subtleties. Especially in the play’s first half, his oscillations between capricious, bombastic king and bruised father often feel abrupt and synthetic.
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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2016 | West End |
Old Vic Revival Production West End |
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Broadway Revival Broadway |
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