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 The TheatreguideLondon Reviews

For the archive, we have filed reviews of three past productions of King Lear on this page. Scroll down for the one you want, or just browse.

King Lear
Old Vic Theatre Spring 2003

Timothy West is a character actor whose forte is crusty curmudgeons you can't help loving. So it would be a good guess, even before seeing this production by the English Touring Theatre, that he'd give us a realistic, human-sized Lear rather than a universe-threatening heroic giant.

And that is exactly what we get. West's Lear is no more or less than the 'foolish fond old man' he calls himself, a tired old workhorse who just wanted to retire in peace but made some serious errors of judgment, which he comes to realise and regret.

And on that level, as long as you don't miss the grander passions more heroic or histrionic actors would bring to the role, West's Lear is a performance to savour. Granted, he isn't very good at the role's more passionate moments - the vicious curses at his evil daughters, or the famous storm scene. But in the quieter, more personal scenes he brings an understated but richly moving humanity to the role.

So the high points of the evening are the scenes in which David Cardy's Fool gently guides him to the realisation of his errors; the beautiful moment in which, having gone through madness, he awakens to a reunion with Rachel Pickup's Cordelia more sane and self-aware than he has ever been; his quiet resignation at going off to prison; and, of course, the heart-breaking final scene.

These are all the human moments, the visions of an old man in pain, going through a painful learning process he shouldn't have to bear; and larger, flashier performers too often miss this aspect of the play.

Unfortunately, much of what surrounds West's subtle and moving performance is not up to the same level. Director Stephen Unwin does not seem to have led his other actors to much sense of their characters, and while some of them have strong moments - Cardy showing us the Fool's warm care for the king, Dominic Richards catching flashes of Edmund's sardonic villainy - too many of them settle for generic sketches rather than fleshed-out characterisations.

Jessica Turner's haughty Goneril and Catherine Kanter's icy Regan are vague outlines of the characters, of the sort you might expect early in rehearsals, not after six months of touring, while Rachel Pickup's Cordelia has no shape at all.

And almost everyone onstage has moments of bizarre, almost amateurish awkwardness, as they don't seem to know what to do with their hands, or how to get naturally from one side of the stage to the other.

All Shakespeare-lovers have touchstone moments for each play, scenes or speeches they wait for, to see how this actor will do them. One of mine comes near the very end, when Lear realises that Cordelia is dead and will never return. At that point Shakespeare inserts a line that is simply the word 'never' repeated five times. I've seen great actors defeated by that line and only one - Olivier on televison - do something wonderful with it, until now. Timothy West makes it a quietly ascending journey into horror until, at the final 'never', he is facing an abyss of despair that will kill him.

It is a great moment in a very fine performance, and one can only regret that the rest of the production doesn't come close to it in quality.

Gerald Berkowitz

King Lear
Royal Shakespeare Company - Stratford Summer 2004; Albery Theatre London Winter

(Reviewed in Stratford)

I think that the first thing I should tell you about the Royal Shakespeare Company's current King Lear, transferred to London after a summer in Stratford, is that it is just short of four hours long.

That in itself will probably disqualify it for a lot of people, and most others will acknowledge that even Shakespeare has to be awfully good to hold you for that long. And Bill Alexander's production, despite many virtues, is not quite that good.

Foremost among its strengths is Corin Redgrave as the title character. Playing Lear considerably younger and stronger than the norm (One of the very few lines that has been cut is the one about his age being 'four score and upward'.), he gives us a strong, humorous and attractive man who is a worthy adversary to his evil daughters, and whose breakdown and descent into madness are all the more shocking for that.

While I have seen one star or another get various pieces of the character more completely or play certain scenes more movingly, few have maintained such a high level throughout. The only place Redgrave seriously fails is in the final scene, which should be utterly heartbreaking and isn't, but there a good chunk of the blame must go to director Alexander, who has staged the scene in a particularly clumsy and off-putting way.

But that is almost all that I have to say that's good about the production. Most of the rest of the cast are either weak or misdirected. Sian Brooke's Cordelia, Louis Hilyer's Kent and Matthew Rhys' Edmund make almost no impression at all, and the usually reliable John Normington almost perversely gives us a Fool who is neither funny, insightful or loving. (The love between Lear and the Fool is one of the strongest bonds in the play, but here they might be strangers.)

Ruth Gemmel makes Regan coolly enigmatic, and Leo Wringer gives an attractive manliness to the usually wimpy Albany. But, on the whole, I'm afraid that you have to sit through too much that doesn't work to get what's good.

Gerald Berkowitz

King Lear
New London Theatre Winter 2007-2008

The most striking thing about the Royal Shakespeare Company's new King Lear is how conventional and straight-forward it is. A few minor slips aside, director Trevor Nunn seems to have decided just to keep out of the play's way and let its inherent power come through.

The downside to this - and it may not bother many - is that Nunn and his actors don't add very much to the play's inherent power. If you've seen the play before, you're not likely to find any special enrichment or illumination here, and you are likely to have a frequent sense of deja vu.

Consider some of the secondary characterisations, for example. Generations of actresses have found hints in the text that Goneril is somewhat officious and controlled while Regan is more passionate and impulsive, and that is exactly how Frances Barber and Monica Dolan play them, Dolan only adding a hint of alcoholism to the middle sister.

Romola Garai's Cordelia is strictly generic ingenue, with no particular individualisation after her one original touch - the hint that her non-response in the love test was meant as a joke that went horribly sour.

It has for decades been more the norm than the exception to cast Lear's Fool as a sad older man, and that is just what Sylvester McCoy gives us. And Philip Winchester's Edmund keeps threatening to slip into the mostachio-twirling flamboyance of a nineteenth-century villain.

Now, all these actors are skilled and sensitive, and they bring their expertise to these conventional portrayals. But they don't bring much beyond that - you wait in vain for a moment or line reading that will suddenly illuminate character or theme in a fresh way.

Even the strongest of the supporting cast just do very well what has been done before. William Gaunt's Gloucester is a warm and human portrayal that generates more emotional response than even the King. Jonathan Hyde plays Kent with the burning energy of the righteous, bringing all his scenes to life. And Ben Meyjes understands and shows us that Edgar grows and matures through his torments.

I've left Lear for last. Ian McKellen speaks the verse beautifully, of course, but for the first half of the play seems merely to be walking through it, offering no real insight into the man's thinking or feeling.

He gets much better after the storm scene, showing us how Lear's madness is also the chance for him to learn and grow. He doesn't, however, contribute much to a sense of the cost of all this to the king.

For all the horror of the mad scenes or the pathos of the awakening, McKellen's Lear seems remarkably stolid and unaffected - William Gaunt steals the Dover beach scene from him by making us believe in Gloucester's decay far more than we do Lear's.

If this is your first Lear, you could hardly do much better. Minor quirks aside, you'll see the play without the interference of a director's interpretation, and you will be touched and moved by most of the moments that are meant to touch and move you.

If you've seen it before, you'll be seeing it again, with very little to make this one stick in your memory.

Gerald Berkowitz

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Review - King Lear - Old Vic 2003

Review - King Lear - RSC 2004

Review - King Lear - RSC New London 2007