Review: Kenneth Branagh’s Short, Shallow ‘King Lear’

“Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks,” Lear famously lets rip in an open-air encounter with the elements that should strike at the heart.

But in a new West End revival of “King Lear,” directed by its leading man, Kenneth Branagh, Shakespeare’s most nerve-shredding tragedy doesn’t sweep us headlong into savagery or sadness. It sounds good, as you might expect with a seasoned Shakespearean actor at the helm, but too rarely succeeds in stopping the heart.

The notably brisk production, which opened Tuesday night at Wyndham’s Theater, in London, runs straight through at just under two hours. It is a tough ticket to get during its limited run through Dec. 9, with a New York run at the Shed scheduled for next fall. Time may well deepen the production’s sense of pathos, if the company can connect more with the roiling fury of Shakespeare’s text. As it stands, a central urgency is missing, from the leading man on through the rest of the cast.

The production feels like an accomplished rhetorical exercise that doesn’t run deep, when this, of all plays, needs to rattle the soul. The litmus test of any “Lear” is whether you emerge from the theater moist-eyed, and my cheeks were dry throughout.

Returning to his theatrical roots, Branagh speaks the verse with crispness and clarity, articulating the journey of the mentally wayward ruler who wreaks havoc by setting his three daughters in competition with one another.

Branagh offers a growing awareness of Lear’s verbal command faltering, and a silent scream late in the show will surely resonate with anyone who has seen dementia up close. Yet a more visceral sense of the play’s power remains out of reach.

You have to wonder about the demands of juggling a role such as Lear from the dual perspectives of director and star. On film, of course, you can look at footage along the way, but it must be tricky for Branagh to get a sense of the production when he is at its center. How can he tell what’s landing, or isn’t?

Onstage, the visuals are suitably austere. Jon Bausor’s set evokes Stonehenge, or the English coastline, with jagged outcrops of rock underneath a circular disc, and the costumes, with fur boots and collars, give off a “Game of Thrones” vibe.

The acting ensemble, made up of graduates from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (Branagh’s alma mater), many in their West End debuts, transmits a feral, take-no-prisoners energy appropriate to a play that famously includes an eye-gouging scene. That atrocity leaves nothing to the imagination, and as its victim, the stricken Gloucester, Joseph Kloska stands out among a variable supporting cast.

Wonderful though it is to give newcomers a chance, the overall impression is of a company that has yet to jell. Corey Mylchreest is impressive as Edmund, the schemer at odds with the virtuous Edgar (Doug Colling), whose baleful pronouncements close the play. Deborah Alli’s imposing Goneril has an instantly striking stage presence missing from her sisters, though Jessica Revell is better when she shifts from playing the tongue-tied Cordelia to the witty, if woebegone, Fool.

At 62, Branagh is relatively young to be playing a character who speaks of an “unburdened crawl toward death.” Appearing bare-chested at one point, he looks more likely to be riding a mountain bike toward the grave, and when he comes in carrying the dead Cordelia, it looks as if she were no burden at all.

And for the first time ever, I had to wonder whether brevity in Shakespeare — an attractive idea, in principle — wasn’t working against the play. The full majesty of “King Lear” needs time to unfold, and I’ve often seen productions twice as long that flew by. This one was over when many of those would be having their intermission, and emerging onto the street after the show, I found myself pondering a curiously weightless production in which the wellsprings of human emotion have yet to be tapped.

King Lear

Through Dec. 9 at Wyndham’s Theater, in London; kinglearbranagh.com.