King Lear starring Kenneth Branagh – Reviews

"Kenneth Branagh’s fast and feverish tragedy"

"At two hours with no interval, the actor-director’s production hurtles past at such speed that the depths of the play are too rarely realised"

"We have come to expect great things: energy, polish and accomplished verse diction. That is what we get here, in his production of what some believe to be the most tragic of Shakespearean downfalls. But although Branagh delivers his Lear with slick, almost playful efficiency, it is not his towering achievement."

"Some of the dissonance is down to pace which, under Branagh’s direction, is as fast and feverish as Macbeth. So much takes place amid the shadows on Jon Bausor’s set design that it bears more than a few shades of that tragedy in its look... Staged at a hurtling two hours with no interval, it is almost cinematic in its action-packed speed, which on stage appears like haste. Actors barrel from one scene to another with too few pauses. This divests the play of its deep, meditative qualities on the nature of being, ageing and questions of the soul."

"Branagh also gives him what appears to be a deliberate, impish madness, comic at times, rather like Hamlet’s antic disposition, until it tips over into genuine decline. Yet there is something that does not quite work, as he declares himself a “weak, and despis’d old man” in a voice that contains invulnerability."

"Branagh’s playful, furious, magnificent Lear is too big for this production"

"Our greatest living Shakespearean finally takes on Shakespeare's greatest role in a pared-down staging that doesn't quite do him justice"

"Of course our greatest living Shakespearian would take it upon himself to not only play but direct himself in Shakespeare’s greatest role sooner or later... Yet far from being the Kenneth Branagh show, this Lear, running at a scarcely believable two hours without interval, has the opposite problem: there is simply not enough of him."

"Amid this slightly absurd neolithic pomp, Branagh’s hirsute Lear exerts dominion from the get go, radiating in those opening precipitous scenes a decidedly Trumpian impression of a ruler still very much calling the shots. There is an icy logic to his fury and an awful playful tenderness too – this Lear is very much a man who relishes performing. And yet there is an unexpected vulnerability."

"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."

"And what of Branagh’s performance? It’s magnificent when it needs to be"

"Kenneth Branagh's radical, youthful Lear tugs at the soul"

"Though his take on 'the actor's Everest' initially fails to ignite, in the final third Branagh's performance is truly moving"

"His take on “the actor’s Everest” lacks both grandeur and pathos until its final third. The early scenes of vanity and fury fail fully to ignite, though his verse-speaking is as clear and comprehensible as ever. Only when his Lear descends into a desolate and helpless state of dementia does he really tug at the soul."

"... he’s cast it entirely from RADA graduates, mostly recent ones. Good on him for giving young actors a break in the West End, though it’s a bit old-school-tie to only support those from his own top-rank alma mater."

"Peel away the brutal pruning of the text, and casting that is blind to age, ethnicity and gender, and this is a solidly old-fashioned staging. The verse-speaking is overly enunciated and emphatic."

"What’s missing is a sense of conviction in the early stages of his performance that an external director might have identified and rectified. But relinquishing control, not being the brilliant one-man band, may be beyond our Ken. Pity."

"Kenneth Branagh’s show has glimpses of greatness"

"Here’s a Lear for the graphic novel era. Pace is everything in a production, directed by its star, Kenneth Branagh, that hurtles past in two hours without an interval. A monarch and his kingdom tumble into chaos in the blink of an eye."

"Does all that energy add up to a dynamic, transcendent evening? Not exactly. If you had doubts about whether the actor-director has the gravitas to take on one of the great Shakespearean roles, you’d have them confirmed here."

"Jessica Revell makes a winningly vulnerable Cordelia even if the decision to have her double as the Fool (as Michelle Terry did at the Globe last year) never quite convinces."

"Jon Bausor’s set design is a distraction too. Perhaps the neolithic slab concept will look more imposing when the production transfers to that sleek New York arts centre the Shed next year."

"The star can still seize us by the throat. The moment when, stripped to little more than a loincloth, he totters on the edge of the spiritual abyss gives us a glimpse of a broken soul. A disjointed evening begins to generate an authentic sense of the tragic."

"Kenneth Branagh’s bracingly idiosyncratic take on Shakespeare’s tragedy relocates the action to prehistoric times"

"Well, if we’re questioning the authenticity, it’s worth considering that Branagh’s production probably feels a lot closer to the England of circa 800 BC – when Shakespeare’s tragedy is nominally set – than the typical ‘Lear’."

"There’s also little denying that our man looks good. You’d never believe he was 62, and while that might actually be a problem if he was your typical frail Lear, his interpretation of the role is as a powerful chieftain whose decision to give up his kingdom to his scheming daughters feels unusually reasonable."

"So Branagh is good, and his take on King Lear as a character essentially ‘works’. Considering the production as a whole, though, and we hit slightly choppier waters... If the setting has a purpose, it’s perhaps to explain why the rest of the company is so young (prehistoric life expectancy being what it was)."

"It’s fine when Branagh is there to do the heavy lifting. But Lear himself becomes less of a presence later on, and the show sags when its star is off stage. At two hours it’s by far the quickest ‘Lear’ I’ve ever seen, but it’s not radically abridged so much as briskly staged – there is still of a lot of Lear-free subplot to be negotiated in the second half."

"Kenneth Branagh’s King Lear stars his favourite leading man: himself"

"Whoosh! The star is loud, clear and wraps up Shakespeare’s epic in two hours flat"

"He’s certainly full of beans as Shakespeare’s grim adventure begins. Don’t worry if you’ve got a cheap seat, Branagh speaks as if all his lines were written on the script in bold."

"It all plays as the best rep production you’ve ever seen: a mighty exercise in rhythm and diction."

"You wonder if Branagh the director is the best person to get the best from Branagh the actor. Yes, he’s been pulling off that double for 40 years, but there is a sweet spot to be found between pace and pathos with this approach, and he never really gives all this rage and ruin room to resonate."

"Kenneth Branagh’s take on the thwarted ruler feels like a first draft"

"It’s the role that so many great Shakespearean actors hope to live up to, but Branagh’s West End performance of an ageing leader in decline feels like a curio rather than a complete reading"

"Generations of Shakespeare fans (and grumpy GCSE students) have grown up with Kenneth Branagh’s stylish, definitive film adaptations, including Henry V (1989), Othello (1995) and Hamlet (1996). So it’s unsurprising that there’s a cinematic, pared-down feel to his two-hour-long West End take on the role that so many great Shakespearean actors age into and hope to live up to: King Lear."

"He sparks with energy as a warrior king who expects ritualistic pledges of allegiance from his daughters"

"This King Lear feels like a curio, one that starts to imagine a different kind of way of presenting this time-honoured story of ageing and decline, without quite offering a complete reading. It feels like a first draft, polished to spearhead visual brightness, but not sharpened to a point. For that, we’ll have to wait for Branagh’s near-inevitable, and welcome, film adaptation."

"Kenneth Branagh needs to stop directing himself"

"The entire thing has the feel of some dubious historical recreation for tourists"

"Kenneth Branagh may well be one of our finest stage actors – but he certainly isn’t one of the country’s leading theatre directors. Yet every time Branagh returns to the stage, he insists upon directing himself rather than entrusting the task to someone with an outside perspective. This unwise tactic has been playing to diminishing returns for years now and fatally undermines his take on one of the most iconic roles in Shakespeare, a role Branagh fans have been longing to see him assume."

"Branagh hits the key notes of Lear’s character arc as he moves from imperious monarch to a broken man with a fracturing mind (“Let me not be mad”). But it remains a very exterior performance, with little sense of real depth of feeling and emotion. One might say that it’s an old-fashioned performance, with much declaiming and enunciation so over-precise that every letter “t” is spat out like a sharp tack."

"There are, thankfully, occasional moments of startling pathos, such as the reunion of Lear and his old friend Gloucester (Joseph Kloska) on the cliffs at Dover."

"Kenneth Branagh's cut-back play leaves HIM looking like the fool"

"... by choosing to direct himself in the title role of what's usually cited as Shakespeare's most challenging play (which opened in the West End last night), he has certainly fitted himself with a figurative jester's coxcomb. Even though the text has been slashed from three hours-plus to a wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am two hours (without interval), it's clear early on that we're in for a very long night. By hacking back the Bard's tale of an ancient Celtic monarch surrendering his kingdom to wicked daughters, he lays waste to the logic of chicanery and betrayals that lead Lear into madness and raging on a storm-blasted heath."

"It's a performance of fearless virility, giving no clue as to why this hale and hearty monarch might want to retire. While there are moments when Branagh seems to notice other actors on stage, his Lear appears to be trapped in his own private bubble. Exhibiting neither frailty nor vulnerability, he robs us of any basis for sympathy."

"Clearly under instructions to get a move on, actors are frequently seen on stage for the next scene, before the last one is over. Not only confusing, by trying to fast-track the play's epic emotional journey, the spectacle becomes ever more bizarre and uncomfortable to watch."

"Kenneth Branagh’s production is overblown and insubstantial"

"Kenneth Branagh’s take on Shakespeare’s tragedy is soulless"

"It’s perhaps Shakespeare’s most harrowing tragedy: an epic vortex of familial trauma, dementia, atrocity and war. Kenneth Branagh’s production – in which he also stars – fillets and compresses the play into just two interval-free hours. Yet it feels interminable. Confused in concept and clumsy in execution, it manages to be at once overblown and insubstantial. It is crammed with florid gesture and self-conscious declaiming, and offers scarcely a single moment of emotional truth."

"At the centre – and giving a performance that feels weirdly detached from the actors around him... What really undercuts our credulity, though, is Branagh’s stagey delivery. Every word is extravagantly over-enunciated; every movement comes with a flourish. It is a style of acting as hollow as it is distractingly outdated."

"It’a a great shame, because there is clearly considerable talent here, and a fast-paced, elemental take on this play could, and should, have been thrilling. Instead, this production mostly feels meaningless and mechanical, with even the notorious, horrific eye-gouging scene stubbornly unmoving. This is not the first Lear that I’ve found almost unendurable – but on this occasion, I’m genuinely sorry to say, it’s for all the wrong reasons."

"Kenneth Branagh savours Lear’s words rather too much"

"Howl. Kenneth Branagh’s rapid, over-elocuted King Lear has a shaggy vigour but misses the scope, the depth and – what is surely the play’s defining attribute – the terrifying dislocation of Shakespeare’s most far-ranging tragedy. Branagh directs and Branagh stars. Robustness is all."

"Branagh, though he can make a line swing, delivers many of his speeches with peculiar consonantal explosiveness. He begins fuelled by anger, but with a twinkle, a touch of Father Christmas. As he unravels, he takes the roar down a notch, and unpicks his fluency"

"Above all, what is missing is the spread of sympathy that gives the play its reach. The poor naked wretches don’t get a look in here. This is less King Lear and more King Ken."

"Kenneth Branagh’s Short, Shallow ‘King Lear’"

"The veteran actor directs and plays the title role in a brisk and curiously weightless London production."

"... in a new West End revival of “King Lear,” directed by its leading man, Kenneth Branagh, Shakespeare’s most nerve-shredding tragedy doesn’t sweep us headlong into savagery or sadness. It sounds good, as you might expect with a seasoned Shakespearean actor at the helm, but too rarely succeeds in stopping the heart."

"Time may well deepen the production’s sense of pathos, if the company can connect more with the roiling fury of Shakespeare’s text. As it stands, a central urgency is missing, from the leading man on through the rest of the cast."

"The production feels like an accomplished rhetorical exercise that doesn’t run deep, when this, of all plays, needs to rattle the soul. The litmus test of any “Lear” is whether you emerge from the theater moist-eyed, and my cheeks were dry throughout."