
















Venue: Belvoir St Theatre (Surry Hills NSW), Nov 15, 2025 – Jan 4, 2026
Playwright: William Shakespeare
Director: Eamon Flack
Cast: Ahunim Abebe, Peter Carroll, Tom Conroy, James Fraser, Charlotte Friels, Colin Friels, Raj Labade, Brandon McClelland, Conor Merrigan-Turner, Sukhbir (Sunny) Singh Walia, Alison Whyte, Charles Wu, Jana Zvedeniuk
Images by Brett Boardman
Theatre review
The “orange menace” has been re-elected, ruling from the White House with narcissism more brazen than ever, even as he appears to drift into senility on the cusp of eighty. We may be tempted to call these times unprecedentedly strange, yet Shakespeare wrote King Lear centuries ago—proof enough that the spectacle of a deluded sovereign is hardly new. Perhaps it is merely our overly idealistic sensibilities that persuade us that today’s disorder is somehow exceptional.
Directed by Eamon Flack and bearing the charmingly elaborate title The True History of the Life and Death of King Lear & His Three Daughters, this production is an unambiguous showcase of exceptional performance, even if its visual world feels short on ambition. Bob Cousins’ set design and James Stibilj’s costumes appear deliberately nondescript, yet their quiet elegance remains unmistakable. The music, however, is a sheer delight: intricately composed by Steve Francis and Arjunan Puveendran, with live accompaniment that draws out every atmospheric nuance, pulling us wholly into the narrative at each turn.
Leading man Colin Friels inhabits the psyche of the titular character with unwavering conviction, offering a performance marked by sustained authenticity, even if he does not always command the stage with equal magnetism. It is, perhaps, the supporting cast who linger more vividly in the mind, many of them seizing their moments with flashes of astonishing brilliance that hold us rapt. Raj Labade as Edmund, Brandon McClelland as Kent, and Alison Whyte as Gloucester, to name but a few, distinguish themselves with performances whose precision and vitality give the production much of its dramatic force.
It was, after all, in this very year of 2025 that we witnessed the emergence of the No Kings movement and the two massive protests it inspired. We need no elaborate justification for its urgency, but King Lear seems to articulate perfectly our present sentiments with tragic precision. In its portrait of power unmoored from wisdom, the play reminds us that the call to dismantle the crown is not a novelty of our age, but a lesson humanity keeps forgetting—until the kingdom burns again.




















































































































