The received wisdom on Kenneth Branagh is that he's been living out a lifelong Laurence Olivier fixation by playing all the major roles he was most associated with, in performances that increasingly make the late Baron of Brighton seem like a master of gritty naturalism. This has inevitably built up to
King Lear, and watching the production - which he also, of course, directs himself in - I have to wonder if this is really the case, or if in fact his role models are the 19th century actor-managers who gave their names to the West End theatres he plays in. Certainly the performances, not only his own but those he gets out of a cast largely made up of recent graduates, are the kind of thing you can imagine a Victorian audience being used to. The evening opens with a projection of the Earth seen from space, perhaps as a clue to where SirKenBran's performance will be visible from.
