Nothing can come of nothing

The latest in an occasional series of theatre reviews...

King Lear : Wyndham's Theatre

I picked this totally because of Ken - I missed the original round of tickets but some matinee tickets went on sale towards the end of the run and I was lucky enough to pick one up.  Right in the back row!

I'd have to say I'm not a massive fan of Shakespeare.  I've got a soft spot for Twelfth Night because I did the lighting for it in sixth form and I've seen Much Ado About Nothing live, but that's my entire live experience - and none of the films I've seen have converted me.  But I've heard King Lear is one of the better ones and I'm not going to pass up the opportunity to see Ken.  So - is it one of the better ones and is Ken worth the trip?!?

Hmmm - I feel I probably need more experience of the worse ones to totally answer the first half of the question, but I do have to say the plot is ABSOLUTELY ridiculous.  With soooo many deaths - often for no obvious reason at all!  However, from my limited experience of his plays, it was at least a plot I could basically follow and thankfully it didn't feature any cross-dressing.

Considering the second half of the question, I do have to say it was all well acted (with a proviso that I'm going to explain later), with a surprisingly big cast.  Ken (OK, I'll finally explain that I'm referring to Kenneth Branagh) who obviously plays the title role and he brings a great pathos to the role - I was surprised that Lear spends quite as much of the play as mad as he does, but I don't blame Ken for that.  The other stand out actor for me was Joseph Kloska as Gloucester - I thought he was absolutely great (and was very pleased when looking him up to see he was born in Gloucestershire).  If I had to go for one more I'd go for Corey Mylchreest as Edmund - who was fantastically bad and is given quite a few solo scenes to shine.  All of which feels a bit of a shame not to call out a female actor given that Lear famously has three daughters - they all did a fine job (although Cordelia was in it less than I expected), but none of them particularly stood out from the crowd.

So what is my proviso on the acting?!?  Well, I'm sure they were all doing exactly what they were told (particularly Ken, given that he directed it) but, particularly for the first two thirds of the play, it was all very rushed - all the lines were delivered at breakneck speed.  If anything, this is a tick in the plus column for the actors because I didn't feel like I was missing any words, but it all just blurred past me when I really felt I could have done with a bit more time to understand what was going on.  

My suspicion is that they wanted to hit a specific run time - this version lasts two hours with no interval, whereas the last time it played at The Globe it ran for 3 hours and 10 minutes and I do feel that the extra breathing space would have helped matters (for me, at least).  However, I'm completely prepared to admit that if I'd watched that version, I'd probably be saying "It was so boring - I wish it had only been two hours".

I did like the setting of the play though - it was simple with some rocks at the back of an empty stage with, at times, video projected onto the rocks, which worked well.  They did have a bit of an obsession with big sticks though - no opportunity was avoided to either bang them on the floor or to fight with them but I'm not sure it worked quite as effectively as they thought it did.

In amusing non-stage related news - we had a shusher in our row.  Whenever another member of the audience made any noise, particularly a cough (however short), he (and it was DEFINITELY a he) emitted a brief but loud "shush".  At no time after a "shush" did anyone make noise, so either it worked a treat or he was just pointlessly shushing a pretty well behaved audience - but I'm sure I wasn't the only one to roll my eyes.  In other weird people related news, you should have seen the set of people waiting at the stage door - loads of whom were trying to pretend they weren't waiting there to see the actors.  They totally didn't convince me though...

One final point in case I ever check this again - the view from very last row in Wyndham's is fine, but the seats really aren't very comfortable, so I suggest you (or I) spend a little bit more and move one row further forward.

All in all, this was an odd experience because I enjoyed it whilst also finding it a bit disappointing.  There was a lot of great acting on display and I was pleased to see Ken in action, but I felt it all could have been done a lot better.  I can't say it's converted me to a Shakespeare fan, but I was quite pleased that I didn't blame The Bard for my disappointment here and I would be tempted to watch this play again, but I would read a review to check it was a longer version.

Pygmalion - A bit disappointing
Danny Baker - An enjoyable load of waffle