Theater Review by Carol Rocamora . . .
Is there any actor alive who is as passionate about Shakespeare, and as invested in his work, as Kenneth Branagh? He’s performed in and/or directed more than fifteen of the Bard’s plays over his illustrious four-decade career, both on stage and in film. He dazzled us in 1984 when he performed the title role of Henry V at the age of twenty-four in a Royal Shakespeare Company. He has directed and starred in film adaptations of Henry V (1989), Much Ado About Nothing (1993), Othello (1995), and As You Like It (2006). My favorite is his unusually heroic interpretation of the title role in Hamlet (1996), an elaborate and epic film in which the entire script was performed (lasting over 4 hours). He returned to perform Shakespeare onstage in 2014 at the Park Armory, with his fast-and-furious Macbeth, which he co-directed with Rob Ashford.
Branagh has infused each Shakespearean role with a vitality, physicality, and panache that has become his signature acting style. A dynamic, action-oriented actor of enormous energy and lithe physical stature, he always looks younger than his age. Indeed, his youthful quality infuses Shakespeare with an infectious excitement. It would be accurate to say that Shakespeare is in his blood.
But now, at 63, Branagh is tackling Shakespeare’s most challenging and demanding role—that of a tragic figure, King Lear, facing the devastation of old age and succumbing to it. If only he had waited a decade longer to play the role . . .
Branagh’s Lear originated in London in 2023 and now is playing at The Shed in a limited engagement, under his co-direction with Rob Ashford and Lucy Skilbeck.
King Lear (first performed in 1607) dramatizes a protagonist’s fall that is more precipitous and devastating than any of Shakespeare’s other tragedies. An aging monarch, intent on dividing his kingdom among his three daughters, Lear vainly puts them to a cruel test that precipitates his downfall—namely, a competitive declaration of love. Dissatisfied with the response of his favorite, Cordelia, he banishes her—and things go radically downhill thereafter. Within only a few scenes, his duplicitous daughters (Goneril and Regan), who falsely professed their love and loyalty, have denied sanctuary to him and his 100 knights in retinue, and he’s left out on the heath, naked and humiliated in a raging storm. The return of Cordelia to fight her sisters ends badly, too; she and Lear end up in prison, etc. etc. The ending is catastrophic; all perish.
The title role of King Lear requires superhuman endurance, profound depth, and broad range—as you know from the past Lears who have tackled the role, including Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, Michael Redgrave, Ian Holm, Anthony Hopkins, etc. Branagh has the skills to play the role, no question. But his, along with his co-directors, directorial choice to condense the script into a two-hour runtime, and perform it at breakneck speed and feverish pitch, turns the play into an action/thriller and robs this great tragedy—wherein a powerful man loses his entire kingdom and family at the end of his life—of its extraordinary depth. “Howl, howl, howl,” indeed.
So, in a sense, Branagh the director has upstaged Branagh the actor. Admittedly, it’s a very exciting two hours. The storyline of the rivalry between the two “bad sisters” Goneril (Deborah Alli) and Regan (Saffron Coomber) takes center stage, and their ferocity is terrifying. Their respective husbands, Albany (Caleb Obediah) and Cornwall (Hughie O’Donnell), get in on the act, too. The blinding of Gloucester (one of Lear’s supporters) by Cornwall, always a high point of horror and one that the audience anticipates with dread, is played with full dramatic force. Similarly, the rival between Gloucester’s sons Edmund (the bad one, played by Dylan Corbett-Bader) and Edgar (the good one, played by Doug Colling) is super-intense, and their final fight is appropriately fierce. Then there’s the final big battle scene (Branagh’s specialty), staged on the largest scale I’ve ever seen.
As director, Branagh has hit all the dramatic highlights—but once again, at the expense of Branagh the actor. His outbursts of anger towards his disloyal daughters in the early scenes are a high point in his crafting of the role. That anger, however, overpowers his descent into insanity that the script requires in subsequent scenes. His “I shall go mad” is a more literal interpretation of the word than I’ve seen before (i.e. “mad” as uncontrollable anger, rather than insanity). Hence, the famous speech he delivers on the heath during the storm (“Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!”) expresses rage rather than loss of sanity. His reunion with his beloved Cordelia (Jessica Revell) goes by so quickly that its full pathos cannot be appreciated. (Forgive me for pointing out that Branagh’s bare chest in the later scenes reveals an extremely fit young actor rather than a pathetic old man. But “let that go,” as Polonius, another geriatric Shakespearean character, points out. Lear’s final entrance, bearing Cordelia’s corpse (“Never, never, never, never, never . . . ”) features a stunning facial expression at the conclusion that is too painfully similar to Al Pacino’s in Godfather III when he, too, howls at the loss of his daughter.
Branagh and his co-directors have set their production in ancient Britain, during the Neolithic (New Stone Age) period (about 1000 years earlier than the original script suggests), so the primitive costumes (by John Bausor) seem distracting. On the other hand, the enormous vaulted ceiling (set by John Bausor, projections by Nina Dunn, lighting by Paul Keogan), with its overpowering planetary imagery, is extremely effective, as if to point out that the tragedy of man is universal and timeless. (Other audience members have suggested that that ceiling resembles a huge iris with a pupil—could that be “the eye of God”?) Whatever the interpretation, it’s striking.
One other bold (and inspiring) directorial choice is Branagh’s casting his company with recent graduates of London’s RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts). Based on his performances of Shakespeare over the decades, he clearly holds the delivery of the Bard’s language to the highest standard. His actors “speak the speech trippingly on the tongue,” as Hamlet required of his own players—and Branagh does the same, as always. They’re all superb articulators of the Bard.
As Edgar, Gloucester’s good son, Doug Colling deserves special mention for his Branagh-esque vitality (and occasionally, welcome moments of humor), while Dylan Corbett-Bader as Edmund (the bad son) is appropriately satanic, as well as seductive. Jessica Revell plays both Cordelia and the Fool with tenderness and feeling—a traditional double-casting that hearkens back to Elizabethan times. In summary, it’s a young and vigorous company, inspired by and infused with Branagh’s natural vitality.
So while Branagh’s Lear is no “poor, infirm, weak and despised old man,” as the script suggests, Branagh the director has set a standard for the performance of Shakespeare that will be his great legacy. For this great contribution to the theater, he deserves not “howls,” but praise.
King Lear. Through December 15 at The Shed’s Griffin Theatre (545 West 30th Street, between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues). www.theshed.org
Photos: Marc J. Franklin
