Yaël Farber is known for the unrushed, ritualistic pace of her plays, having directed Shakespeare’s most feverish tragedy, Macbeth, at two and a half hours, to some critical consternation. But Farber has found her natural home in King Lear with this dark, doomy and epic production.
It still feels more than its three-and-a-half-hour duration, but once in its elements, it ekes out every last tragedy, from King Lear’s unravelling to the fulminating rivalry between sisters Goneril (Akiya Henry) and Regan (Faith Omole), and the subplot of one brother Edmund (Fra Fee) betraying another Edgar (Matthew Tennyson). We feel the smallest sadness, even that of Kent (Alec Newman), who stays loyal to Lear and witnesses his final moments.
Staged in modern dress, it looks like a high-end TV miniseries at first; a drama of family and political machinations, private and public power. Danny Sapani’s Lear is groomed, presidential, with a smooth inscrutability as he invites public flattery from his three daughters at what appears to be a political rally, with microphones, before an audience. But signs of volatility and mental upset come quickly when Cordelia (Gloria Obianyo) refuses his command with a burst of unexpected violence.
That strain of violence is seared into the play, with characters mauling and murdering each other in sudden, visceral ways. Aside from the eye-watering scene involving Gloucester (Michael Gould), there is shocking physicality here, from Edmund’s viciousness to Regan and Goneril’s thuggery – although alongside it is sex, sensuous and venal.
Fee makes for a calculating villain, and resists playing his part with cartoonishness, while Regan and Goneril are performed with enough complexity to make them ambitious alpha women with open sexual appetites, who are up for the contest for their father’s succession.
The Fool (Clarke Peters) is an observer, visibly grey – rather like Farber’s witches in Macbeth – and melancholic with wisdom. Sapani has a natural chemistry with him, and Lear’s touching relationship with the fool drives his confrontation with the “nothingness” that leads to his tragic downfall.
The heath scene is not antic, but Lear’s world really does feel like it is shaken to its core. He is drawn as a homeless man in a charred Beckettian landscape with disused tires and grit below foot. He is shirtless, shoeless, stripped to his underwear, the kind of man you might see in a park corner, with plastic wrapped around him for warmth.
Merle Hensel’s set in general is a marvel, the storm creating movement with swaying chains along the back wall and violin players who keen and roll on the floor as they play. Light showers the stage at times, and cuts the blackness with torch-light at others (design by Lee Curran), while the sound is just as arresting, blending heavy, modern, bass with violin notes that hover before becoming big aural rumbles (sound design by Peter Rice with composition by Max Perryment).
Obianyo, meanwhile, brings both soul and steel to Cordelia – sometimes singing her lines. Most tragic is Sapani’s Lear, shaking with rage one minute and tremors the next, woebegotten on the heath, abject in a hospital gown when he is reunited with Cordelia, and human until the end. It is a supremely moving performance, among the most tragic King Lears I have seen.
• At Almeida theatre, London, until 30 March
• This article was amended on 16 February 2024. An earlier version said that Edgar betrayed Edmund; in fact it was the other way around. It is therefore Fra Fee who makes for a calculating villain, not Matthew Tennyson. It was further amended on 17 February 2024. It is Edmund who is vicious to Regan, not Edgar.
