Storm still within

King Lear
Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, in rep until 26 August

At the prospect of every fresh attempt on the summit that is King Lear, one’s heart begins to sink — the bleak, bleak vision, the convoluted subplottings of son against sibling and father, of sister against sister, the merciless length of the play. It seems only yesterday that Ian McKellen triumphed in Trevor Nunn’s Stratford staging. But here’s the RSC with a new production, this time with Greg Hicks in the title role. For him it’s the culmination of a run of major roles in which his wiry physique and nervous intensity have always been memorable. Caesar and Leontes suited him less well than Coriolanus, but it’s as Lear that he’s delivering the performance of a lifetime.

Where McKellen was mellifluously strong on the humanity and saving humour in the tyrant more sinned against than sinning, Hicks creates a more primitive, rawly powerful figure, as impressive in his rages as he is heart-wrenchingly eloquent in his descent into madness and self-knowledge. His liberties with the verse spring always from a sure dramatic instinct. Turning on Cordelia, he holds an emphatic pause between every word, ‘Better — thou — hadst — not — been — born’, then a moment later to the French king who’ll marry her for love and not inheritance, ‘ThouhastherFrance’, dismissively eliding every word. There’s always some new shade, some new emphasis to hold your attention, whether in a seemingly casual aside or in the most familiar of the great speeches: ‘Blow winds and crack your cheeks’ as he braved the cataracts that here, quite literally, rain down upon his head; ‘Howl, howl, howl’, shaking every word and being shaken with them.

Suddenly re-energised by his reunion with the blinded Gloucester (the excellent Geoffrey Freshwater), he vows revenge upon Goneril and Regan’s husbands, ‘…kill, kill, kill’.