It is a big deal when King Lear divides his kingdom into three. A big deal too when his favourite daughter, Cordelia, effectively rules herself out of inheriting. Bigger still when the other two, Goneril and Regan, make him unwelcome in his own land. It is the enormity of these events, the outrage of a monarch being disrespected and undermined, that explains his exile and madness.
Although there is much fury in Kayleigh Hawkins’ staging for Her Productions, Unseemly Women and Girl Gang Manchester, there is too little sense of order being disrupted. Nor is there enough suggestion of a king whose arrogance and complacency are as much factors in his downfall as the ambitions of the next generation.
Christine Mackie (Coronation Street’s Dr Gaddas) brings clarity and passion to the title role, but neither she nor the rest of the company seem to believe in the king’s authority. She pleads where she should proclaim. Less a patriarch bewildered not to be treated as top dog, this Lear is more the sacked employee trying to claw their job back.
The uncertainty about status affects the whole production – one in which character relationships are hard to fathom. It is tempting to attribute this to the all-female and non-binary casting: this is the fifth such production in an annual series and does at least have the novelty of extending the range of weapons to include handbags and stilettos. But although you have to concentrate to remember who is playing male and who female (perhaps no more of a problem than with the all-male Lord Chamberlain’s Men), the greater challenge is to figure out how they relate to each other and where the power lies.
You expect Cordelia (Ella Heywood) to be the moral heart of the play, for example, but she has so little rapport with her father that her death carries no emotional weight. In a production with sporadic moments of invention – a blackout here, an environmental storm there – Mackie does an effective job railing against the universe, her sprightly form turned frail, but it is a tragedy that feels more sad than inevitable.
• At Hope Mill theatre, Manchester, until 18 June, and Shakespeare North Playhouse, Prescot, 21–24 June
