SIR Kenneth Branagh has done a lot to make Shakespeare more accessible. His production of King Lear at Wyndham’s, in which he also stars, will not, however, rank as one of his high achievements. It is based on two well-intentioned ideas, neither of which, in practice, really work.
The first idea is that Shakespeare’s demanding play can be effectively slimmed down to two, interval-free hours. The result is a pell-mell hurtle through the plot that causes increasing confusion and that, crucially, undermines Lear’s own rage against inequity. I found myself missing lines such as: ‘Plate sin with gold/And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks’, which reveal the King’s growing sense of society’s unfairness.
The gulf
