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King Lear West End

King Lear 2023

Run Time:
Approximately 2 hours No interval
Ages: 12+
Opened: October 31, 2023
Closing: December 09, 2023

King Lear - 2023 West End History , Info & More

Wyndham's Theatre
(Leicester Square) Charing Cross Road London

Kenneth Branagh will direct and play the title role for 50 performances only at Wyndham’s Theatre from 21 October.


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FEATURED REVIEWS FOR King Lear

Kenneth Branagh’s production is overblown and insubstantial
2 / 10

It’s perhaps Shakespeare’s most harrowing tragedy: an epic vortex of familial trauma, dementia, atrocity and war. Kenneth Branagh’s production – in which he also stars – fillets and compresses the play into just two interval-free hours. Yet it feels interminable. Confused in concept and clumsy in execution, it manages to be at once overblown and insubstantial. It is crammed with florid gesture and self-conscious declaiming, and offers scarcely a single moment of emotional truth.

Branagh’s playful, furious, magnificent Lear is too big for this production
6 / 10

This is a bare-bones Lear – stripped of much of its weird cosmic poetry and shorn too of much of its complexity. The claustrophobic intimacy suits a reading that is fiercely attuned to the domestic and familial chaos at the play’s heart and the central crisis of Lear’s relationship with Jessica Revell’s single-minded Cordelia. It is less suited to the play’s restless sense of the epic and universal scope.

Review Roundup: Kenneth Branagh's KING LEAR Opens in the West End. What Did the Critics Think?
by Aliya Al-Hassan - November 1, 2023


Kenneth Branagh returns to the West End to direct and play the title role in William Shakespeare’s KING LEAR, for 50 performances only. Completing the cast is a company of RADA graduates.

Review: KING LEAR, Wyndham's Theatre
by Alexander Cohen - November 1, 2023


Alarm bells ring when a director stars in the play they are also directing. Even if that director is Sir Kenneth Branagh. Nine times out of ten the production falls flat and the audience are left wondering if ego is to blame. Branagh’s hotly anticipated stab at King Lear is, sadly, no exception.

Photos: Inside Rehearsals for The Kenneth Branagh Theatre Company's KING LEAR
by Aliya Al-Hassan - October 3, 2023


Images have been released from inside the rehearsal room for The Kenneth Branagh Theatre Company’s King Lear. Check out the photos here.

King Lear FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

How long has King Lear been running on the West End?
King Lear opened at the Wyndham's Theatre on Tuesday Oct 31, 2023 and has now been running for 1 month.

King Lear History

Other Productions of King Lear

1754   Broadway
Broadway
1905   Broadway
Broadway
1906   Broadway
Broadway
1907   Broadway
Broadway
1907   Broadway
Broadway
1907   Broadway
Broadway
1909   Broadway
Broadway
1911   Broadway
Broadway
1915   Broadway
Broadway
1917   Broadway
Broadway
1918   Broadway
Broadway
1923   Broadway
Broadway
1930   Broadway
Broadway
1930   Broadway
Broadway
1947   Broadway
Broadway
1950   Broadway
Broadway
1962   Off-Broadway
Off-Broadway
1968   Broadway
Broadway
1973   Off-Broadway
Off-Broadway
1978   Off-Broadway
Off-Broadway
1982   Off-Broadway
Off-Broadway
1990   Off-Broadway
Off-Broadway
1996   Off-Broadway
Off-Broadway
2004   Broadway Lincoln Center Revival
Broadway
2006   Off-Broadway
Off-Broadway
2007   Off-Broadway
Off-Broadway
2011   Off-Broadway Public Theater Production
Off-Broadway
2014   Off-Broadway
Off-Broadway
2014   Off-Broadway Public Theater's Shakespeare in the Park
Off-Broadway
2016   West End Old Vic Revival Production
West End
2018   West End Chichester Festival Theatre West End Revival
West End
2019   Broadway Broadway Revival
Broadway
2023   West End
West End
2024   Off-Broadway Off-Broadway Production
Off-Broadway

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