Posted on 08/30/2023 7:54:08 PM PDT by nickcarraway
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
Kenneth Branagh is to star as King Lear in a production that he will also direct in London and New York.
The play will run for 50 performances at Wyndham’s theatre in the West End from October and then transfer to the Shed’s Griffin theatre in the US in autumn 2024.
It is produced by the Kenneth Branagh Theatre Company (KBTC) which presented a season of seven plays at the Garrick theatre in London from 2015-16 including John Osborne’s The Entertainer with Branagh in the lead role. In 2017, Branagh directed Tom Hiddleston as Hamlet in a limited-run production to raise funds for Rada. In 2021, KTBC’s planned production of The Browning Version by Terence Rattigan, starring and directed by Branagh, was cancelled due to Covid-related absences during rehearsals.
Branagh, who played Edgar opposite Richard Briers’ Lear in a 1990 touring production of Shakespeare’s tragedy, said in a 2019 interview that King Lear has a “sense of contained outrage by previously voiceless people” that remains pertinent in the modern political climate. The play, he added, explores a “tremendous lack of forgiveness … that is perhaps also something that our world is experiencing – a savage and judgmental and instant and violent division”.
It is the second star-powered, transatlantic Shakespearean production announced this week. Ralph Fiennes and Indira Varma will perform in a new version of Macbeth, staged by director Simon Godwin in warehouses in Liverpool, Edinburgh, London and Washington DC.
The full cast for King Lear, presented by Fiery Angel and the Shed,
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
” Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow! You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout Till you have drench'd our steeples, drown'd the cocks! You sulphurous and thought-executing fires, Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts, Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder, Smite flat the thick rotundity o' the world! Crack nature's moulds, an germens spill at once, That make ingrateful man!”
James Earl Jones had the shear power of voice to be the best Lear I ever saw. Branagh was softer as Henry V, let’s see he do Lear. This will be interesting.
I didn’t see James Earl Jones, wish I had. The best I saw was Sir Robert Stephens at the Royal Shakespeare Company a year before he died.
Yes, I agree; I'm not sure he can be all that that role calls for.
Macb...oh, you mean the Scottish play!
If you say it, then you must walk counter clockwise, in a circle, three times and then spit...to ward off bad luck.
62 was fairly old in those days. Elizabeth famously old in reigning England for example lived only to 69.
I've seen Branagh in several different Shakespeare's plays. some he was quite good in, though most others he wasn't. And he was THE worst Poirot I have EVER seen...and that's saying something, as I've seen ALL of the Christie movies and Brit series, of her works.
I saw Ian McKellen as Lear in 2016 and 2017, and he was outstanding. And I don’t think I need to see Branaugh if that’s his political take on the play.
So desperate for relevance points.
I guess the performance won’t be able to stand on it’s own without them.
What do you mean political take?
Maybe I spaced out and missed something, but what are the relevance points?
I knew someone would know
about that . Have you seen Throne of blood the Japanese version? Mifune is turned into a human pin cushion by arrows at the end.
Branagh’s Shakespeare movies have been my gateway drug into to Shakespeare
Branagh's Henry V is the best one, though. Olivier's is a bit too cartoonish for me.
Yes, I’ve seen that Japanese film, as well as Orson Welles in nazi-like uniforms which is great.
Olivier's Hamlet was so short, he just took a machete to the play. No Rosenkrantz or Guildenstern.
It was competently done, but I couyld never feel it was one of the great Hamlets
Welles did TWO versions of the Scottish play...one in the Nazi-like uniforms and one in very old Scott costume and accents. I do like both of those.
OTOH...David Tennant's Hamlet was the full on play, but I didn't much care for him as Hamlet.
Lear has NOTHING to do with “voiceless people”, nor the peons; it has to do with the treachery of Lear’s two eldest daughters and their respective spouses.
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