King Lear Off-Broadway Reviews

Kenneth Branagh’s “King Lear,” which opened Thursday night at the Shed, is a tragedy that doesn’t seem to know why it’s so tragic. The production’s fleet and feathery interpretation of how one man’s decline rains down misfortune on everyone around him undercuts the gravity of the classic, demoting it into a mere trifle.

Shakespeare never lacks for juicy insults, and King Lear is especially thick with verbal abuse. The unhinged title monarch viciously curses his daughter Goneril with rot in her ovaries and there’s a comically long string of invective the disguised Kent heaps upon villainous servant Oswald in front of Gloucester’s castle. In the trimmed version now running at The Shed I particularly miss one put-down—again, between Kent and Oswald. “Thou whoreson zed!” Kent sneers. “Thou unnecessary letter!” Gone from this sped-through, two-hour cut. But what would you expect? This is an unnecessary Lear.

In this production, directed by a tripartite directing team (Rob Ashford, Lucy Skilbeck, and Kenneth Branagah, one of our great contemporary Shakespeareans, who also stars as Lear), it’s a brisk unspooling. Having shaved the text down to a 2-hour running time with no intermission, the breakneck pacing doesn’t give the audience a chance to absorb the gravity of the drama or recognize the mounting stakes. One scene bleeds right into the next, which levels the play’s biggest moments.

King Lear is stripped down to two hours, focusing more on the external conflicts than any internal ones. This makes for an action-packed show, but without some of the more emotionally resonant scenes, the tragic ending doesn’t quite pack a punch.