One particular moment in the opening “division of the kingdoms” scene here acts as a shining illustration of Northern Broadsides’ aesthetic of performing the classics in the Yorkshire voice. When Cordelia speaks unflatteringly to Lear, both father and daughter show an unaffected, demotic directness. Catherine Kinsella’s Cordelia may be uncomfortable speaking so plainly, but she is not at all reluctant, and Barrie Rutter in turn captures the moment when bluff bonhomie turns to Yorkie irascibility. Later, Fine Time Fontayne is persistently blunt as the white-faced Fool, whose conception of his job is not to satirise the king away from arrogance but simply to take the piss out of him.

Elsewhere, though, this touring production (opening at Broadsides’ home venue in Halifax) is less special. This may be surprising given the directorial presence of Jonathan Miller, but this Lear has much in common with Miller’s other theatrical outings for more modest companies in the past decade or so. The approach is simple and uncluttered (in this case, nipped and tweaked to come in at under three hours, a pleasant surprise for any Lear), but also lacking substantive insight or individual perspective.

It is also oddly thin on subtlety. Directness is one thing, but Sean Cernow need not give us quite so much wicked cackling as the nefarious Edmund, nor does Jos Vantyler’s Oswald need to be altogether such a simpering, effeminate New Romantic (an unfortunate juxtaposition of period costuming and hairstyle there). Rutter’s Lear has an interesting lack of affect late in the play, as if his madness moves into a dissociative phase just before his final, partial recovery; much of the rest of the time, however, there is an underlying self-consciousness - he seems to be demonstrating the role rather than inhabiting it. John Branwell’s Gloucester keeps the blood flowing through his subplot more vitally than Rutter does through the main strand of the narrative.

At times it’s almost a Cliff Notes Lear, and Broadsides are better than that. An appropriately Yorkshire-flavoured analogy would be with the stonewall cricket batsmanship of Geoffrey Boycott at his most obstinate: it’s admirable in its way, but you can’t call it exciting.
    
Written for the Financial Times.