King Lear Royal Exchange 50th anniversary production: Review

Is Lear mad? Or is he driven mad? The genius of Shakespeare is that he leaves this question open for us to decide. Lear may be as ‘mad as the vexed sea’, or it may simply be senescence or the onset of dementia which leads him to rashly cast out faithful daughter Cordelia on a caprice.

Director Matthew Dunster neatly pivots this thrilling production to show it is Lear’s two other daughters – Regan and Goneril – who drive the aged king to the edge of insanity. It opens on a scene of decadent, neon-lit court where Regan and Goneril, their husbands and retinue, drink away the pleasures of the night in anticipation of the heady inheritance of a kingdom divided between them.

David Threlfall as Lear enters upright and regally tailored, not a single eyelash out of place, in total command of himself and his senses. The picture is all the more forceful when we later see him wild-eyed, shirt-strewn, finger-jabbing the air, hair lashing his face, admonishing the elements for their temerity in bringing him so low. It is a fantastically charged performance from Threlfall, daring us not to feel anything but pity for this former monarch who fools now mock and whose cunning children whip him harsher than any wind could.

We are totally gripped by his portrayal of Lear half-drowned in madness. We long for hm to come up for air from under the waves only to see him pulled under again. And we marvel at the lightning switch from lucidity to lunacy which Threlfall is able to conjure up by stepping in and out of Lear’s fractious inner voices. It is an astonishing performance and quite possibly the work of a lifetime.

The storm clouds part occasionally in this tempestuous production to let in a little light: when Threlfall as Lear wakes in confusion after being sedated by a nurse and asks, ‘Oh God, are we in France?’, the audience erupts in joyful recognition. There are many such moments in the show where tragedy cannot quite manage to keep comedy out.

Threlfall is held aloft in the production by some outstanding acting. In particular, Tom Varey as wronged son Edgar is transmogrified into a lurching, tic-ridden ‘mad Tom’ whose writhing and twisted body is in stark rebellion against his mind. His electrifying account of madness is all the more terrifying for being one not brought on by old age but by brotherly betrayal.

This is a brutally visceral production: thunder roars, lightning cracks open the stage, and rain rages for the villainy carried out by the protagonists. When Gloucester’s eyes are gouged out at Regan’s behest, nothing is left to the imagination and we see – and feel – the terror of the times (and perhaps ours where execution is seemingly the norm in some parts). The fights and sexual encounters between characters are adroitly choreographed and designed to hold and shock us at the depravity we’re capable of as humans.

Do I smell a fault? Not in this production, it is near faultless.

King Lear is at The Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester from 2 October to 15 November 2026.