HEADLONG

Rupert Goold's 'King Lear' is set in a kind of metaphorical vision of '80s Liverpool. For Lear's division of his kingdom the cast is dressed in shabby, late-'70s clothing reminiscent of a retirement do for a trade union boss. At first it seems like an odd choice, the wide variety of regional accents appears random and the dowdiness of it all curiously depressing. It rapidly becomes clear what Goold is up to.

Once Lear has divided his kingdom, Regan and Goneril are next seen wearing the kind of dresses worn by Tory trophy wives in the early '80s. It is a sharp and incisive way into the play. Goold's use of analogy is delicately suggestive and fluid. You don't have to worry about it not mapping exactly. Its playfulness makes the storytelling incredibly clear and also turns the play outward. The staging is as thorough as it is inventive; bursting with wit and constantly switching between intimate to epic. Gloucester's blinding is played out with such gory relish that one man actually fainted on press night.

The supporting cast is universally excellent. It says something about the production that Michael Colgan even manages to make Goneril's husband Albany interesting, funny and sympathetic. The production achieves such a thrilling intensity that it leaves you feeling wrung-out and emotionally drained. This is extraordinary theatre.

Pete Postlethwaite isn't at all what some of us had expected. His warty, whiskery, pustular, rubicund, infinitely lived-in face seems to promise a rough, coarse Lear. The brown suit he wears in Rupert Goold's modern-dress staging adds to the impression of a grouchy Cumbrian farmer off to the lawyers to will his sheep to his sons rather than an arrogant king handing his realm to his daughters. Yet he proceeds to give us depth, subtlety and, above all, vulnerability.

One of the marks of the major actor is to be able almost literally to change shape. And Postlethwaite, whom I'd always thought bulky, comes across as thin, withered, painfully fragile. It's a strong performance in a production that combines energy, invention and, on occasions, the showiness that marked Goold's Macbeth.

For a couple of years now, Rupert Goold has been the director who could do no wrong. From his multi award-winning Macbeth to the multi million-pound box office of Oliver! Goold has had the golden touch... He brilliantly dislodges the play from the daunting realms of the mythic where it too often nests and gives it instead the compelling, accessible-to-all stamp of a quality soap opera. Albion might be disintegrating but so, more crucially, are a family and an old man's mind.

On Giles Cadle's down-at-heel set, which has the perfect low rent look of a Shane Meadows film, Caroline Faber and Charlotte Randle are elegant evil personified as Goneril and Regan, the latter doing unspeakable things to Gloucester's eyeballs. Tobias Menzies's athletic Edgar reminds us why, in this chaotic kingdom, good has to go undercover to survive.

Occasional cherishably human touches are typically Gooldian: Postlethwaite sings a catch from My Way during the opening scene, and the Fool (Forbes Masson) sums up the heath's absurdity with Singin' in the Rain. Rich, detailed and highly recommended.