(Michael Billington’s article appeared in the Guardian, 11/2.)
Anyone fearing another uphill trudge through Shakespeare’s darkest play should enjoy this revival, first seen at Shakespeare’s Globe in 2012, by Belarus Free Theatre. In Vladimir Shcherban’s production, this is King Lear endowed with the anarchic spirit of the 1941 movie Hellzapoppin’. But, although the mood is initially jaunty, the production gives us a glimpse of what it must be like to live under a whimsically irrational dictatorship.
Lear enters as a decayingly senescent figure bent double over a pram: he then whips off his white wig to reveal himself as a bullish middle-aged prankster.
http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/nov/12/king-lear-review-belarus-free-theatre-young-vic-london
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