After eight years Kenneth Branagh makes a commendable return to the London stage and to Shakespeare, for just 50 performances of a cut-down, radically youthful King Lear.
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.
