Daddy issues? Try KING issues. Shakespeare's most savage family reunion.
King Lear, old and tired, divides his kingdom among his daughters, giving great importance to their protestations of love for him. When Cordelia, youngest and most honest, refuses to idly flatter the old man in return for favor, he banishes her and turns for support to his remaining daughters. But Goneril and Regan have no love for him and instead plot to take all his power from him. In a parallel, Lear's loyal courtier Gloucester favors his illegitimate son Edmund after being told lies about his faithful son Edgar. Madness and tragedy befall both ill-starred fathers.
Acting
Hordern's Lear crumbles magnificently from king to broken thing.
Direction
Miller strips away spectacle, exposes raw familial horror.
Writing
Shakespeare's most brutal lines hit like gut punches.
Director
Jonathan Miller
Michael Hordern
King Lear
Sarah Badel
Goneril
Penelope Wilton
Regan
Angela Down
Cordelia
Frank Middlemass
Fool
Anthony Nicholls
Earl of Gloucester
Michael Jayston
Edmund
Ronald Pickup
Edgar
Ewan Hooper
Earl of Kent
Benjamin Whitrow
Duke of Albany
John Shrapnel
Duke of Cornwall
Donald Gee
Oswald
David Horovitch
Duke of Burgundy
David Neal
King of France
George Merritt
Old Man
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Miller filmed this for BBC in stark studio conditions, rejecting traditional storm scenes for psychological intensity.
This 1975 version emerged when Hordern was actually Lear's age—his physical frailty is devastatingly real, not performed.
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