It is a big deal when King Lear divides his kingdom into three. A big deal too when his favourite daughter, Cordelia, effectively rules herself out of inheriting. Bigger still when the other two, Goneril and Regan, make him unwelcome in his own land. It is the enormity of these events, the outrage of a monarch being disrespected and undermined, that explains his exile and madness.
Although there is much fury in Kayleigh Hawkins’ staging for Her Productions, Unseemly Women and Girl Gang Manchester, there is too little sense of order being disrupted. Nor is there enough suggestion of a king whose arrogance and complacency are as much factors in his downfall as the ambitions of the next generation.
