By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK?: ***

WHEN?: Saturday 21 October, opens 31 October and runs through 9 December 2023 RUNTIME: 120 minutes without interval

At 62 years old director Branagh is considerably younger than the last 2 actors we’ve seen take on the role of Shakespeare’s King Lear – Sir Ian McKellen who was 78 in 2017 and the late Glenda Jackson 80 in 2016.

• Read on for reasons including how Branagh’s casting is less A Haunting In Venice and more a vanity in London

Interviewed in the programme Derek Jacobi, ‘Lear class of 2010’, says : ‘When you’re a young classical actor, you go through the Hamlet hoop. If your Hamlet is anywhere near all right, then you’re admitted to the classical club. Towards the end of your career, you’ve got to go through the Lear hoop to confirm they were right to let you in.’

We haven’t seen Branagh in the West End since The Kenneth Branagh Company’s year-long run of six plays at the Garrick Theatre closed in 2016 on its highest high with its star taking the lead in The Entertainer.

His 3rd outing as Agatha Christie’s beloved Belgian detective Hercule Poirot in A Haunting In Venice has recently topped the UK’s cinema box office and this autumn we very much enjoyed its predecessor Death On The Nile.

In fact Branagh can probably lay claim to being 1 of Hollywood’s biggest stars now with a career that boasts an incredible tally of an Oscar, 4 BAFTAs, 2 Emmys, a Golden Globe and an Olivier Award.

His relative youth then means that his Lear, which plays for 50 performances at the intimate 759-capacity Wyndham’s Theatre in London’s West End, has a lot of convincing to do as the king who asks his daughters what they think of him, doesn’t like the answer and triggers a chain of events that will see his descent into madness.

Branagh’s Lear is cinematic rather than theatrical with its duration curtailed cleverly into a single sitting usually devoted to seeing a film rather than some of the more sprawling and self-indulgent Lears that we have seen.

The production’s look is TV’s Game Of Thrones meets The Walking Dead with the ‘sticks and stones’ references that litter Shakespeare’s text taken a little too literally with a Stonehenge-like backdrop and more staffs on a stage than you could wave a stick at, although you probably couldn’t find a spare 1 at the Wyndham’s because they were all being used by the cast.

At 1 point as Lear’s madness takes its hold, the bearded Branagh with ruffled hair is stripped topless revealing a sturdy and muscular frame that underlines the problem here: we simply weren’t convinced by Lear’s fate given his lack of years despite Branagh’s worthy 1st attempt at the role.

If Trump gets the Republican nomination, we can see why Branagh’s thoughts about Lear’s parallels with the former US president make it an appetising prospect to stage on Broadway (see teaser trailer above and interview immediately above) ahead of the November 2024 US election but we think rather than the sound of an incoming storm it is of theatrical box-ticking that we can hear throughout this production.

We can see the appeal, but like McKellen who returned to Lear with much greater success 2nd time around, we think Branagh very much needs to do the same.

While we appreciate the motivation, in the words of his latest cinematic success, we think his Lear was less A Haunting In Venice and more a vanity in London.

• Main picture via Facebook courtesy DMT Tickets
• Have you ever been to the Wyndhams Theatre before or seen Kenneth Branagh onstage? Let us know what you thought in the comments below
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