On the wooden floorboards of a bare and slightly raised stage, a king draws a chalk circle: perfect, empty, unbroken. Behind him, twelve empty seats wait and watch. Before him, the audience. 

The empty circle is Lear’s kingdom, but it is also a diagram of a disastrous decision to carve up his family alongside his lands and wealth. The circle haunts the play: it remains fixed and outlined in the centre for the duration as lands are fought on and over, loyalties are twisted and tested, and that king rages back against a howling storm. 

This is Belvoir St Theatre’s King Lear, or The True History of the Life and Death of King Lear and his Three Daughters, director Eamon Flack’s tackling of the tragedy. This name is a nod to the play that inspired Shakespeare’s own take on the troubled king, and to the tradition of which Flack is here a part: re-adapting, configuring, and shaping an old story for new audiences and their times.