Just halfway through the year and already I have seen four King Lears, with at least one more yet to come. Timothy West’s performance in the title role, however, is certainly the best so far of 2016 and some way beyond.

At 81, West is a year older than Lear himself. He embodies both the increasing physical frailty of old age and the continuing denial of and frustration with it. Moreover, whatever the state of the body, the mind and heart glow undimmed. His rage at Cordelia’s supposed ingratitude is immediate and fierce, but still shot through with regret: when he disowns her and tells the king of France, “we/ Have no such daughter, nor shall ever see/ That face of hers again”, his voice catches just a little on the last words. Similar notes are sounded on two or three subsequent occasions; this Lear grows mad not least because he has always known how foolish he has been.

All the younger roles in Tom Morris’s modern-dress production are taken by students from Bristol Old Vic’s associated Theatre School. Some of them also get to play with some of Morris’s dearest toys – and I say this in rapt appreciation. In the first phase of the theatre’s ongoing renovation under Morris, a number of storm machines were found dating back to the theatre’s 18th-century origins; the storm scene here uses the original Thunder Run in the theatre’s roofspace as well as a quartet of wind and rain machines operated onstage by students.

It’s no wonder here that Lear loves his Fool so much. Stephanie Cole, with a coxcomb attached to her knitted woolly hat, is clearly affectionate when twitting Lear for his folly, and during his madness she pretty unambiguously mothers him. David Hargreaves, seen here last year in The Crucible, makes a dignified Gloucester. As Goneril, student Jessica Temple is appealingly, chillingly blithe in her treachery. And West’s Lear, in the final phase which is always the most moving, is simply masterly, injecting a wealth of distinct nuance into each repeated “Howl” or “Never” before suddenly dying as it seems in mid-sentence. Seldom, even at this moment in offstage Britain, has the division of the kingdom been so heartbreaking.

Written for the Financial Times.