SOURCE: Stokes, John. Review of King Lear. Times Literary Supplement, no. 5161 (1 March 2002): 20.

In the following review of Jonathan Kent's staging of King Lear at King's Cross for the Almeida Theatre, Stokes lauds the production's “high aesthetic” style and Oliver Ford Davies's Alzheimer's-informed Lear.

The actor Tim Pigott-Smith said on the radio recently that one of the greatest strengths of the Almeida Theatre while it has been under the artistic control of Jonathan Kent and Ian MacDiarmid is that it has remained “an actor's theatre”. The word “actor” here was probably in silent opposition to “accountant”, rather than to director or to designer, since Kent and McDiarmid have constantly enlarged their theatrical ambitions, often in expensive ways, so that their company might give the best of itself. There has been a consistency of prioritles that amounts to something like a style. Of course, the plays themselves have had a...