The last time Kenneth Branagh appeared on a British stage was in the autumn of 2023, dressed like a distant cousin of Fred Flintstone and enunciating words in a manner that can most politely be described as peculiar.
The role was none other than King Lear and Branagh was, once again, directing himself in a production that was crying out to have its madder excesses curbed. My two-star review for this paper was one of the kinder critical responses to the whole doomed enterprise, and I commented sadly that Branagh’s unwise tactic of self-direction had been playing to diminishing returns for years now.
There can be no doubting that Branagh is one of the finest actors this country has produced in the past half-century, yet like too many of those who reach the top in the worlds of theatre and cinema, he appeared to have become untouchable, closed to any outside words of gentle wisdom and thus counterintuitively ploughing an ever less productive furrow.
His West End season of five plays in 2015-6 was a case in point; as Leontes in The Winter’s Tale, he seemed reluctant even to leave the stage when that character takes a second half hiatus. It is no wonder that Judi Dench, with a crisp 15 minutes of playing time as Paulina, took home all the awards, leaving Branagh empty handed.
It saddened me greatly to watch Branagh’s descent into self-indulgence, as I had admired him since I was a teenager. When I was in the sixth form, I saw him play Hamlet for the RSC and was in no doubt that I was watching something very special, an actor absolutely inhabiting those magnificent words. His Tuscan-sun-kissed film spin on Much Ado about Nothing, in which he starred with then-wife Emma Thompson, remains one of my very favourite films. Yet it is salutary to remember that both of those pieces happened in the early 1990s.
Fast forward to 2026 and after an absence of more than 30 years, Branagh the great Shakespearean has returned to his spiritual home at the Royal Shakespeare Company, to play Prospero in The Tempest in Stratford. Those Lear reviews obviously hit home because, joy of joys, he is not directing himself; that job has been entrusted to Richard Eyre, esteemed former boss of the National Theatre, who is making his RSC debut at the august age of 83 (there’s hope for us all).
It’s a slightly underpowered production. Its marked post-colonial interpretation – white people taking over black people’s land – results in a notable performance of wounded dignity from Ashley Zhangazha as Caliban.
The action starts when Branagh walks on stage to don a sweeping blue cloak laced with gold thread and, hovering by a music stand, wields a conductor’s baton-cum-magic wand as Prospero the mystic conjures up the great storm that is the catalyst for the action. Branagh speaks the verse beautifully, but I did wonder whether I was admiring his elocution instead of the emotional depths he was bringing to a character who knows that he is nearing the end of his life.
For much of the action, he displays an attitude of world-weary humour, before slipping into a highly moving register at the finale, as Prospero snaps the wand in half and renounces his “rough magic”.
This more restrained version of Branagh is a hugely welcome sea change; I would be fascinated to know how much “reigning in” Eyre had to use. As if this weren’t enough, once this run of The Tempest is over, Branagh moves down the hallway to the RSC’s Swan Theatre to star alongside Helen Hunt in The Cherry Orchard, directed by the company’s co-Artistic Director Tamara Harvey. This not-being-in-charge business seems to be catching on.
‘The Tempest’ is at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford upon Avon, to 20 June (rsc.org.uk)
