It begins with a king building a wall to keep the enemy out, unaware that he is constructing a prison for himself and his people. It ends with the new regime which has learned nothing from the past, also building a wall, and the same king - now old and blind - stumbling atop it to make his own tiny act of revolution. In between there is light and dark, ghosts and machine gun fire, fighter jets and birdsong, screams of terror and weeping stars.
Inspired by Shakespeare's King Lear, and fashioned in the image of the atrocities of the 20th century, Edward Bond's 1971 epic doesn't show its age. In fact, it seems scarily prescient. To see it in Jonathan Kent's steely production is to be scared by it. It brands you with its appalling cruelty and its terrible beauty.
In a world where there is no justice, violence begets violence. The tyrant Lear (Ian McDiarmid) is overthrown by his vicious daughters Bodice (Claudie Blakley, knitting blood) and Fontanelle (Sharon Small, all rapacious embonpoint), who have learnt cruelty and injustice at their father's knee. When Lear is given refuge by the gravedigger's son (Bryan Dick) this act of kindness ends in murder and transforms the murdered man's wife, Cordelia, into the leader of a revolutionary army fuelled by hate. Only when Lear has his eyes put out does he begin to see.
It may sound tough going, but it is thrillingly simple in performance due to the dazzling directness of Bond's writing, and the scope of the production that in Dick Bird's design takes the symbol of the wall right to the audience. Wonderfully acted, with McDiarmid giving a performance whose greatness is in its lack of ego, it is a triumph that restores your faith in theatre and restores Bond to his place as the greatest of post-war British playwrights.
· Until April 2. Box office: 0114 249 6000.
