Kenneth Branaghs production is fleet and facile.
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Theres a difference in the way Americans do mediocre Shakespeare and the way Brits do it.
Ours tends to be easier to recognize for what it is.
We tend todeflate the cosmic into the casual, making word salad while were at it.
For the Brits, theres at least a base-level expectation of textual rigor.
If anyone started their answer with, Well, uh, basically shed scream, No!
and wed start again.
Im happy for 17-year-old Kenneth, and also that doesnt answer the question.
Branaghs overarching vision seems to be textural rather than essential to be as urgent as possible.
Get stuck doing onlyyand youre wallowing.
Youll be running without carrying anything.
But all three of these crucial figures wind up feeling like outlines.
What have their lives been like?
are they shocked, prepared, cynical, hurt, furious?
Here, they convey plot rather than complexity of soul.
They say their lines crisply and get on with it.
As an actor, Branagh has always been one of the most fluent speakers of Shakespeare out there.
Listen to hisrs just keep on rolling, all the way up to the end.
Thosers, though, are where technique even Branaghs reaches its limits.
Poetry has got to marry with circumstance, and the circumstances ofLearare monstrous.
Branagh doesnt sit with anything, nor let us receive the full force of its impact.
If theres an actor inKing Learwhos attempting to go deep as he drives forward, its Kloska.
Hes feeling what hes saying and whats said to him.
His suffering is tangible.
We have seen the best of our time.
ThatisKing Lear.But Branagh, Ashford, and Skilbeck offer no consistent access to the plays magnificent existential darkness.
Look there, look there!
Its a mystical death, a moment of preternatural vision followed by a departure.
he says, then joins Cordelia in the place we cannot see.
He seizes up, gasps and grabs his head, thrashes, contorts, dies.
It will, in the end, come to nothing.
King Learis at the Shed through December 15.
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