This is the Excellent Foppery of the World

Source: National Theatre Live: King Lear (2018) (imdb.com)

For the third Thursday in a row (following The Comedy About a Bank Robbery and Matilda), I've been out for theatre outing - though in this case it was technically a cinema outing, but it was another NT Live screening, so still theatrical; and in this case, I couldn't get any further from the previous outings if I had tried. From farce and maggots to Shakespearean tragedy, this was the celebrated production of King Lear, direct from Chichester Festival Theatre, and starring the one and only IAN MCKELLEN!!!!!

At 79, he's said this will be his last Shakespeare role, but what a role, a once good King fading away, possibly due to dementia (but who knows). As you would expect, he was amazing as ever!

I didn't know anything about Lear beforehand (heck, I missed the recent Anthony Hopkins helmed TV adaptation, so didn't even have that to give me a head start), so it was a little hard to understand some of the details, so I'm thankful for the short film before the show started.

As well as Lear himself, there are some excellent performances from Sinead Cusack as Kent (and later disguised as Caius with an Irish accent), Luke Thompson as Edgar and James Corrigan as the scheming Edmund (I think he may be one to watch, he really had a Tom Hiddleston's Loki-esque quality about his performance).

Lear is epic, gruesome, and strangely timely - the main theme is division, whether that be political, or split between families - father and daughter, father and son and more. In fact, Cusak said that she always says "Brexit" to co-star Danny Webb (Gloucester) before their first scene together. The biggest downside is that it is rather long - in fact, the first half was so long, I thought that it was to be played straight through with no interval like A View From The Bridge was.

If that takes your fancy, then you have until 3rd November to catch it at the Duke of York's Theatre in the West End.