There are two King Lears currently raging in London. Derek Jacobi's in the Donmar's pared down production has received the most attention. But for my money it is the RSC's epic version that is the more rewarding. Not that Greg Hicks particularly out-performs Jacobi in the role. But what David Farr's RSC production has in spades is context. Here, a post-war, industrial dystopia makes sense of Shakespeare's mystifyingly motivated monarch.
Hicks superbly portrays a Lear who finds through his suffering that most humanising of qualities that all leaders lack until they fall - a self-deprecating sense of humour.