Howl. Kenneth Branagh’s rapid, over-elocuted King Lear has a shaggy vigour but misses the scope, the depth and – what is surely the play’s defining attribute – the terrifying dislocation of Shakespeare’s most far-ranging tragedy. Branagh directs and Branagh stars. Robustness is all.
All over brown, grey and dun, with furs and blankets and Ugg-style boots, Jon Bausor’s costumes and set design – Stonehenge overseen by constellations – are ancient Britain as from a picture book. Fights are with staves, which are awkward weapons, not least because it is never clear why people drop down dead after clashing. There is insistent background drumming and much running across the stage.
So far, so historically coherent. But why does everyone talk as if they were being jabbed between each word: “What. Is. The. Matter?” Is this ancient Britspeak? The effect is not quite pronounced enough to suggest a distinctive dialect but is more than sufficient to mangle the sense of the verse, with subjects and verbs waving at each other across the gulf of a pause.
Branagh, though he can make a line swing, delivers many of his speeches with peculiar consonantal explosiveness. He begins fuelled by anger, but with a twinkle, a touch of Father Christmas. As he unravels, he takes the roar down a notch, and unpicks his fluency: horror at going mad as much as madness itself leads him to stumble over lines, to flutter his hands despairingly at the tempest in his head. As a winsome Fool, Jessica Revell (who doubles as Cordelia) tries to calm him down with waving arms, like a yoga teacher urging a big breath.
Throughout the quick two-hour evening, famous lines are overemphatically signalled: “Ripeness is all” might be a party political slogan. Branagh himself too much savours his extraordinary words. Unnerved but not capsized by distress, he looks into the middle distance when he talks about being bound on a wheel of fire: he might be surveying the prospect as a motoring correspondent. Above all, what is missing is the spread of sympathy that gives the play its reach. The poor naked wretches don’t get a look in here. This is less King Lear and more King Ken.
Established talent has also got itself in a tangle at Lyonesse. Twelve years ago, dramatist Penelope Skinner cheered up the Royal Court with her randy The Village Bike. Yet her new play skitters all over the place, stunning accomplished actors. A satirical scene leaves astute Doon Mackichan looking poleaxed by her character’s obviousness (she’s a movie executive who does not specialise in sweetness). As a runaway former star who has gone woo-woo in Cornwall, Kristin Scott Thomas – gumboots, fur coat and woolly hat – flings herself against the bars of a limited role in an attempt to appear free-spirited. Lily James fares better as a desperate young writer-mother (much scrabbling in her shoulder bag), perhaps because she is actually meant to seem ill at ease.
There is a kernel of interest in the idea that women may feel trapped, whether or not their partners are actually seeking control: in the end, Skinner seems to be saying, systemic patriarchy defeats even the best of intentions; the most steadily warm presence is Sara Powell as a radiant gay woman. Still, this is not enough to give the play a pulse. Georgia Lowe’s design is suggestively lofty and desolate but imagery hangs heavy over the evening: stuffed birds in a cage! Waves crashing against a fragile homestead! Ian Rickson, habitually assured and subtle, has for once misfired. Thomas Hardy described coming back from Lyonesse with magic in his eyes. If only.
All is not lost. Battersea Arts Centre’s Beatbox Academy, which in 2018 remade Frankenstein from the creature’s point of view, now cracklingly recreates The Pied Piper of Hamelin: not, as I anticipated, from the rats’ perspective, but as a show that proclaims the transforming power of music.
Pied Piper is written, composed and musically directed by Conrad Murray, the academy’s marvel-making co-founder, yet it is as if every number is generated from within the seven-strong company of singers, rappers and beatboxers. Seldom has a script been less visited upon a cast. Seldom has so all-embracing a musical show involved so little technical assistance. The only instruments are mouths and bodies.
The talent is tremendous. New adventures in sound keep coming; pure-voiced solos; beatboxing that hums and clicks and raspberries and waterfalls; unexpected chorale laments. The script is vivid: Hamelin’s evil mayor hates music and owns a vermin-infested pie factory where his citizens are drudges. The only thing to be sharpened as the show takes off on tour is clarity at the beginning. The words, which are always worth hearing, are not always distinguishable.
What a case for cooperation, on and beyond the stage. The company sways and kicks as if blown by a single breeze. As this is a “hip-hop family musical”, the audience get to join in. Not only with the chants – “Kids up! Rats down!” – but as a backing beatbox orchestra, sibilant and plosive. The conclusion is rousing: a plea for a new Hamelin, where arts and performance are celebrated. After all, stifle music and art and drama and you kill the imagination of a better future.
Star ratings (out of five)
King Lear ★
Lyonesse ★★
Pied Piper ★★★★
King Lear is at Wyndham’s, London, until 9 December
Lyonesse is at the Harold Pinter theatre, London, until 23 December
Pied Piper is on tour from 6 December; 2024 dates to be confirmed
