Tragedy on a shoestring is a tough call for a cash-conscious theatre company, as Creation demonstrates in its new production of Shakespeare’s King Lear.

Economies of casting can work to the good with comedy, with an added sense of fun from the actors being two or more characters at the same time. We have seen this often from Creation in its 20-year history.

In tragedy, however, these multi-tasking demands can sometimes detract from the gravity of the action, while also making it hard to follow for anybody not familiar with the play. Here, for instance, we have Natasha Rickman as both Lear’s eldest daughter Goneril and her equally odious younger sister Regan, falling out over lover Edmund who is portrayed by an actor (Morgan Philpott) also cast as both their husbands, Albany and Cornwall.

Scenes in which they are all involved move dangerously close to farce, with coats and hats substituting for real people, even if they help to underline the “spiralling disorientation” of Lear, as suggested in a programme note by Max Gold, the actor playing him.

And playing him very well. In the subterranean space of Blackwell’s Norrington Room, to which the company has returned for the fourth time, the audience experiences a heart-breaking, close-up study of a once mighty monarch driven to madness by the folly of giving away his kingdom. The action is updated by adapter (and director) Charlotte Conquest to an approximation of the present day, with the opening division of his lands turned into a major political event with all the technological trappings of our time.

Thereafter the story is told at a cracking pace, with lucid presentation of the parallel action involving the loyal Gloucester (Michael Sheldon) and his sons, the bad-hat Edmund and the virtuous Edgar. The petite Lucy Pearson plays Edgar (as well as Cordelia and the Fool), proving an unlikely victor in the closing combat with his usurping brother.

The show continues until March 19.

3/5