King Lear, Shakespeare’s Globe review ★★★★★

‘Look there, look there!’ Could it be the great, Olivier-winning Kathryn Hunter reprising the role of King Lear in a revival of director Helena Kaut-Howson’s boundary-pushing 1997 production? Yes, yes it is. This take on the Bard’s tragedy is the star piece of the Globe’s 2022 summer season, only not everything is as it was billed. Kaut-Howson had to step down from directing two weeks prior to its opening, to recover from an accident, and Hunter’s partner, Complicité co-founder Marcello Magni, who was due to play Kent, is no longer performing in the show, credited as a creative collaborator instead. Indeed, it seems there could be more going on behind the scenes than meets the programme, but let’s focus on the thing itself…

This King Lear plays out on a nearly bare stage, with none of the aesthetic appeal of the Globe’s Much Ado About Nothing, running alongside it. The scenery is left to the imagination, but clever movement direction from Magni syncs with composer Claire van Kempen’s steel-drum led score to shift the location from court to stormy heath.

Kathryn Hunter and Michelle Terry in King Lear at Shakespeare's Globe. Photo: Johan Persson

Scenes between Hunter and the Globe’s artistic director Michelle Terry, who plays both Lear’s Fool and Cordelia, are electric; two of the great Shakespearean actors of our time, they complement one another on stage, knowing intrinsically when to give or take the spotlight.

Fragile but powerful, Hunter's Lear looks as decrepit as can be. A study in how performance at its best can lead you to suspend your disbelief, she commandeers authority from the more physically imposing figures surrounding her, despite her wheelchair and slight frame. In the final scene between the broken but acquitted Lear and Cordelia, Kaut-Howson has Hunter and Terry dressed in ethereal whites, crumpled on the floor in one another’s arms, and it’s a heartbreaking sight.

Hunter’s is not a female Lear, though: the production – which sparked controversy when it was first staged 25 years ago, a time when women playing male leads was still a novelty – sees her become the aged man, liberty collared and suited, with sallow skin and a shock of wispy white hair.

Kathryn Hunter and Michelle Terry in King Lear at Shakespeare's Globe. Photo: Johan Persson

Terry brings a foxiness to Lear’s Fool. She’s a hippyish clown with a white painted face, who lets the audience in on her jokes but takes no prisoners, taming then tormenting those in her path. But her loyalty to Lear is always palpable.

Further stand-out performances come from Ryan Donaldson as a show-stealing Edmund, all Poldark in appearance, but pure comedian in the delivery of his character’s dim one-liners (‘Look, sir, I bleed’). There’s also a welcome contrast between Ann Ogbomo’s bullish Goneril and Marianne Oldham’s glamour-puss Regan.

Kaut-Howson’s King Lear was convention-defying when it premiered back in 1997. In 2022, it looks much more traditional. It’s not the most exciting production of the tragedy to show at the Globe (this reviewer will never stop gushing about Belarus Free Theatre’s extremely physical take on the play in 2012), but its central performances are second to none.