King Lear
Royal Shakespeare Company
The Observer

King Lear (Aldwych), though a hell of a thing to encounter at the end of a long week, is another gift from the Midlands. Trevor Nunn’s production is much tightened since Stratford; the Victorian costumes are unobtrusive and helpful. The wicked sisters (Barbara Leigh-Hunt and Meg Davies) develop plausibly from frigid property to sadihm, and two performances (Bob Peck’s Ken and Michael Pennington’s Edgar) are much improved. 

Hopkins must have been inspired by Lear when he wrote that ‘the mind, mind has mountains’; Donald Sinden frequently brings us, shivering to their edge, lurching towards some terrible new thought. His recognition of Poor Tom, ‘the thing itself,’ is finely done; so is the robust tyranny of the beginning. All that is missing, in production and performance, is the concerted cataclysm of the end; this is not a great Lear, but it is a very good one.