King Lear (Bristol Old Vic)

A nation divided. Generations at war. A kingdom thrown into chaos by foolish political play. Rarely has King Lear felt as prescient. Bristol Old Vic Theatre School in collaboration with Bristol Old Vic have delivered a clear, compelling and thrilling take on this great tragedy that combines the epic and the intimate, the theatrical and the real, in the best work director Tom Morris has delivered since he took over at Bristol Old Vic in 2009.

Combining the collective experience of three terrific actors, Tim West (Lear), David Hargreaves (Gloucester) and Stephanie Cole (The Fool), with the graduating set of theatre school members, who turn professional this July, proves a master-stroke. The young in this play are buzzing with fierce energy, ready to make their own mark upon the world. For too long held back by an older generation that have kept power beyond their time, they stage a bloody and vicious coup on the old world order. From the moment that Lear divides his kingdom in three for his daughters, in little more than a move to stoke his vanity (sound familiar?), the world as we know it changes. Order becomes disorder, family turns on family, the cruel classes take control and the bloodshed that follows is sadly inevitable.

Timothy West, tackling the Everest of Lear for the fourth time, makes this king a gentle, foolish old man from the start. There is no early explosion as his youngest and favourite daughter refuses to play along with his game, just a reasoned and calm dismissal of her from his land. It's a move that makes him sympathetic to us from the beginning and as such it is tough to see what has driven his two eldest daughters to such psychopathic tendencies and his youngest to the cruelty of not playing his game. He approaches the role incrementally, mines each line for the truth and in its simplicity comes up with a Lear that movingly loses his mind as well as his crown, which tellingly he snaps in two at the end of the first scene. There are similarities to the award-garlanded Kenneth Cranham losing his sense of reality in Zeller's The Father here.

His fool, acting contemporary Cole, plays the role with a lack of varnish and shows that the part can be genuinely funny if you remove the zaniness so often added and get to the core of the relationship between the king and the only one who dares voice the truth to him. Their relationship is a study in melancholia, of two people heading towards the end and finding solace in each other. It’s the mining of truth that this play returns to again and again and ultimately makes it so impressive.

The older actors are more than matched by the blazing urgency and burning fire of the graduating actors. Alex York makes a charismatic villainous Edmund who seduces both Michelle Fox’s Regan and Jessica Temple’s Goneril who manage to make something more out of the roles then stereotypical Ugly Sisters. There is also a camp, simpering Oswald from Joey Akubeze that almost runs away with the show.

It is all set in Anna Orton’s epic cell like set, lit in dark looming shadows by Rob Casey and costumed effectively in modern garb by Aldo Vazquez Yela. It is a thrilling realisation of a great tragedy and a brilliant beginning to sixteen professional careers.

King Learplays at Bristol Old Vic until the 10th July