{"id":7941,"date":"2014-01-27T17:17:24","date_gmt":"2014-01-27T17:17:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=7941"},"modified":"2015-05-18T17:23:20","modified_gmt":"2015-05-18T17:23:20","slug":"simon-russell-beales-king-lear-headed-to-cinema-screens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=7941","title":{"rendered":"Simon Russell Beale’s ‘King Lear’ headed to cinema screens"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"King<\/a><\/p>\n

By Ray Bennett<\/p>\n

LONDON \u2013 The National Theatre announced that NT Live will show\u00a0the landmark Sam Mendes production of \u201cKing Lear\u201d starring Simon Russell Beale on cinema screens across the UK and around the world on May 1.<\/p>\n

It is a most wonderful production as Mendes, who was a wunderkind theatre director before he turned to film, shows he has lost none of this gift for staging the great plays.<\/p>\n

He won an Oscar for his first picture, \u201cAmerican Beauty\u201d and last year hit box office gold with the James Bond picture \u201cSkyfall\u201d although he returned to the stage in 2011 for Kevin Spacey\u2019s splendid appearance as \u201cRichard III\u201d.<\/p>\n

Beale is a marvellous actor and his Lear, a modern bullheaded leader, is a career pinnacle with shattering range and power. He is matched by Anna Maxwell Martin (pictured with Beale, \u201cThe Bletchley Circle\u201d) as a ferocious Regan, Kate Fleetwood (Mary Cattermole in \u201cHarry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 & 2\u201d) as a devious Goneril, Adrian Scarborough as the Fool and Olivia Vinall (\u201cDoctor Who\u201d) as Cordelia.<\/p>\n

The sold-out production, which runs on the Olivier Stage until May 28, received mostly rave reviews. Critic Michael Coveney in whatsonstage.com said it is \u201cthe most completely satisfying version of the play in a long while\u201d.<\/p>\n

Paul Taylor in the Independent said it is \u201ca powerfully searching account of the tragedy that fuses the familial and the cosmic, the epic and the intimate, and ponders every detail of the play with a fresh, imaginative rigour\u201d.<\/p>\n

Michael Billington in the Guardian called it \u201cquite exceptional\u201d and said, \u201cIt combines a cosmic scale with an intimate sense of detail and is neither imprisoned by an intellectual concept nor by an actor’s temperament. Instead, you feel the director, Sam Mendes, and the Lear, Simon Russell Beale, are working with everyone else to explore every nook and cranny of the play.\u201d<\/p>\n

The NT said the 3 hour and 25 minute production will be shown on more than 500 screens in the UK and more worldwide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Ray Bennett LONDON \u2013 The National Theatre announced that NT Live will show\u00a0the landmark Sam Mendes production of \u201cKing Lear\u201d starring Simon Russell Beale on cinema screens across the UK and around the world on May 1. It is … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,16],"tags":[1644,303,3662,3992,2737,898,3991,1060,1093,3990],"class_list":["post-7941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-theatre","tag-king-lear","tag-adrian-scarborough","tag-anna-maxwell-martin","tag-event-cinema","tag-kate-fleetwood","tag-national-theatre","tag-olivia-vinall","tag-sam-mendes","tag-simon-russell-beale","tag-willliam-shakespeare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7941"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7941\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7946,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7941\/revisions\/7946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}