King Lear at the Royal Exchange Theatre

Few productions could feel more fitting for the Royal Exchange Theatre’s 50th anniversary year than King Lear. A monumental Shakespeare tragedy, a major theatrical homecoming and three formidable creative forces at its centre, this new production brings David Threlfall, Matthew Dunster and Nadine Shah together for one of the theatre’s biggest events of the season.

Threlfall returns to the Royal Exchange Theatre after 27 years to take on Lear, the ageing king whose decision to divide his kingdom sets family, power and loyalty on a path towards collapse. It is a role made for an actor of his range, and his return feels especially significant in a season built around the idea of homecoming.

The production also marks the sixth Royal Exchange Theatre engagement for director Matthew Dunster, whose work has repeatedly pushed classic texts into fresh territory. Here, he takes on one of Shakespeare’s most brutal plays, a story where power corrupts, families fracture and language itself begins to fall apart.

Then there is Nadine Shah, joining the cast as Goneril and composing the production’s music. The Mercury Prize-nominated musician brings another distinctive voice to a show already packed with creative weight. Lisa Diveney joins her as Regan, with Isobel Akuwudike as Cordelia, while Jonathan Slinger returns to the Exchange as Gloucester.

All of this lands during a landmark year for the Royal Exchange Theatre, which opened in 1976 and has spent five decades placing audiences at the heart of the action in its extraordinary in-the-round theatre. There is something particularly exciting about seeing a work as vast and stormy as King Lear staged inside such an intimate space.

Big, bold and steeped in the history of the building itself, this feels less like another Shakespeare revival and more like a genuine anniversary statement.