King Lear review – veteran Robert Menzies leads a minimalist take on Shakespeare tragedy
‘The war was not going to stop me’: amateur Ukrainian actors stage King Lear in UK
April 2024
Brief letters
An optimal solution for rough sleepers?
Letters: Homelessness and car thefts | Shakespearian sound effects | Baking with paraffin | Showing your shilling | Pre-milkshake joy
February 2024
The week in theatre: An Enemy of the People; King Lear; Double Feature – review
King Lear review – Yaël Farber’s modern-dress take is shockingly vicious and supremely moving
November 2023
OK, Kenneth Branagh isn’t great as King Lear – but have you seen his abs?
Zing Tsjeng
The week in theatre: King Lear; Lyonesse; Pied Piper – review
October 2023
King Lear review – Kenneth Branagh’s fast and feverish tragedy
At two hours with no interval, the actor-director’s production hurtles past at such speed that the depths of the play are too rarely realised
September 2023
Is King Lear a mountain or molehill? How to play the tragic monarch and ‘stupid old fart’
Paul Scofield, Ian McKellen and Glenda Jackson have all redefined Shakespeare’s unpredictable ruler – a role in which actors usually succeed
June 2023
In memory of Glenda Jackson: ‘She touched something central about what it means to be alive’
Two people who watched the actor and Labour politician closely remember the desire to get to the truth that made her so powerful on stage, screen and in parliament
April 2023
Kenneth Branagh to direct and star in King Lear in London and New York
The play, which the actor has described as being pertinent to our ‘savage and judgmental’ political climate, will run for 50 performances in the West End before transferring to the US
February 2023
Regional theatres are on their knees – support your local one
Tim Crouch
Covid cut off the communal experience of live performance and venues have taken a battering. Let’s return and reconnect
September 2022
From King Charles III to King Lear: what theatre tells us about taking the throne
Mike Bartlett’s 2014 play anticipated a constitutional crisis, while playwrights including Shakespeare and Chekhov have shown how traumatic a transfer of power can be
August 2022
Tim Crouch: Truth’s a Dog Must to Kennel review – virtual King Lear
Using a VR headset and an empty stage, Tim Crouch puts his audience at one remove from the Shakespeare play to comment on the world and theatre itself
June 2022
King Lear review – Kathryn Hunter’s frail, fond old ruler almost unbearably affecting
Back in the role she first played in 1997, Hunter uses her extraordinary transformative powers to show us the king as a geriatric child at the head of a disintegrating nation
April 2022
Brief letters
The prime minister merely echoes the empty threats of King Lear
Brief letters: ‘Terrors of the earth’ | Oxford Union debating skills | Half Man Half Biscuit | Expecting the Spanish Inquisition
December 2021
Book of the day
Learwife by JR Thorp review – out of Shakespeare’s shadows
This impressive, opulently written debut novel begins where King Lear ends, as his invisible queen tells her story at last
December 2020
A happy ending for King Lear? Trauma of plague caused Shakespeare to change play’s finale
The Bard, like us, lived through a period of trauma. One expert now believes it coloured his later plays
June 2020
Ian McKellen's Hamlet, aged 81: it's madness but there's method in it
Eyebrows were raised over the casting for the young Prince of Denmark, but it could give the play new life
March 2020
Lockdown culture
Shakespeare in lockdown: did he write King Lear in plague quarantine?
Pestilence was rife in the Bard’s time, closing theatres and ravaging life. Did he write his bleak, desperate drama while self-isolating? We sift the evidence
