In a rounded cast, James Garnon plays an excellent, sly Edmund and the messy Fool (Richard O'Callaghan) delivers his lines like an erratic pub stand-up-one way to make the most of the fact that the Fool's cracks are not always hilarious. In one annoyance, the part of Cordelia, a role that can easily tip into self-righteousness, is delivered by Olivia Morgan with all the self-satisfaction of an uppity student home for the  vacation.

King Lear has some major dramatic leaps for a director to conquer, such as why do Regan and Goneril move from being merely rude and thankless to murderous psychopaths with a fondness for eye-gouging? Brown's confident direction didn't quite iron these out, but the raw power of this production makes up for that. A bold design by Ruari Murchison allows the palace interior to swivel around to make a sort of vertical heath (on top of other travails, a lot of perching is demanded of this Lear). The effect is awesome. 

One grating inclusion though is Nazi-uniformed guards. Will no one rid us of this tired and usually pointless analogy? Apart from a cheap thrill, few directors have a clue why they are using it so wildly out of context. Me neither.

Shakespearean audiences were thoroughly involved, so they would have enjoyed a very Yorkshire moment when Goneril (a gorgeous, shrewish Neve McIntosh) gets into a spitting affray with her husband. It  was all too much for the man behind me in the stalls. "Slap her!" he cried — proof that the big man can still move modern groundlings to passion.