Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I love Shakespeare, and I'm not opposed to modern adaptations. National Theater Live's Julius Caesar did this effectively, and seamlessly. The politics and family drama of King Lear could just as well be plausible today as they would be in Shakespeare's time. The setting is not the issue here. Neither is the cast. How could you possibly go wrong with living legends like Anthony Hopkins, Jim Broadbent, Emma Thompson, Jim Carter and Emily Watson? Individually their performances were outstanding. But the sum of its parts just never clicked. I understand they cut nearly a third of the play out to bring it under two hours. Sadly that left big gaps in the narrative, and made the transitions frustratingly jarring. I've seen at least 4 versions of Lear, both in film and on stage so I'm more than familiar with the characters and the plot. But watching this left me a little confused. I wouldn't mind a three-hour version of this, with the same cast. It would make the storytelling more logical. A lot of what was left out would have helped establish the value of the relationships, and would have given the conflict (and eventual character deaths) more emotional impact. Changing the fool's suicide to what looked like a heart attack practically made his character useless. He's supposed to be the only voice of sanity in all of the madness, and when he realizes all is vanity, his becomes one of the most heartbreaking deaths in the play. I really wanted to like this. It's a quality production with an amazing cast, but it wasn't enough.