Shakespeare: King Lear (unabridged)
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WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Shakespeare: King Lear (unabridged)
Read by Paul Scofield, Alec McCowen, Kenneth Branagh and full cast
[ Naxos Audiobooks / 3 CD Box Set ]
Release Date: Monday 31 December 2001
This item is currently out of stock. It may take 6 or more weeks to obtain from when you place your order as this is a specialist product.
The tragedy of King Lear receives an outstanding performance in an all-star cast led by Britain's senior classical actor, Paul Scofield. He is joined by Alec McCowen as Gloucester, Kenneth Branagh as The Fool, Harriet Walter as Gonerill, Sara Kestelman as Regan and Emilia Fox as Cordelia. This is the ninth recording of Shakespeare plays undertaken by Naxos AudioBooks in conjunction with Cambridge University Press, and is directed by John Tydeman. It was released to mark the eightieth birthday of Paul Scofield in January 2002.
"If you buy only one spoken-word recording this year, make it this. Forty years after first playing Lear at Stratford, Paul Scofield repeated the role just months short of his 80th birthday. He is breathtakingly, stingingly brilliant. The range and control of that wonderful voice remain awesome, and like an organ virtuoso he switches registration seamlessly, from blazing diapason rage down to dulciana pathos, exploiting the studio's opportunities for intimacy never offered by the stage. Taken right down, the small mad ensemble pieces with Edgar, the Fool and Kent yield so much more. The studio also spares an actor of Lear's actual four score years the near-impossibility of carrying in the dead Cordelia (Emilia Fox). David Burke gives a bravura performance as Kent, and Kenneth Branagh a nippy yet restrained counterpoint as the Fool. But this is Scofield's show."
