Hopes were high for this production of the greatest play in the language, with the Oscar-nominated Pete Postlethwaite in the title role and the director, Rupert Goold, having several Shakespeare successes under his belt, including a fine RSC Tempest and a superb Chichester Festival Macbeth. Hopes, however, are not fulfilled. Despite a certain youthful energy and inventiveness, it lacks dignity to a degree and is flawed by numerous misjudgments. For anyone who knows and loves the play, some scenes are truly painful to behold.

Unease sets in with an opening scene featuring a finger buffet of the kind you might find at a Travelodge wedding reception. Little sandwiches, I think even a bowl of Cheesy Wotsits, and Lear and his daughters in party hats. Now, we know that the essence of Shakespeare’s genius is the mixing of the banal with the sublime, the tragical with the comical and pastoral, but this is just tacky. And if you iron out the huge social distinctions between the play’s king and courtiers, waifs and beggars, and ignore that central image of “robes and furred gowns” versus “rags”, you lose much fierce political insight.

The production features modern dress of the most uninspired kind. Goneril is pregnant, wearing a cheap coat and slurping coffee from a plastic cup. Lear is in an ill-fitting suit and croons snatches of My Way. His knightly retinue are football hooligans with St George’s Crosses painted on their faces.

There is an irrelevant voice-over of Margaret Thatcher reciting her Prayer of St Francis of Assisi: “Where there is discord, may we bring harmony.” Time and again, such gimmicks and stylistic tics are clumsy, obtrusive and far from illuminating. On the contrary, out goes the candle, and we are left darkling. Goneril appears with a submachinegun, wheeling a pram. Edmund and Edgar fight with plastic toy swords. Lear talks of his “good biting broadsword” rather than his “falchion”. Why?

There are compensations in the acting, though they are incapable of balancing out the vulgarity or redeeming the whole. Amanda Hale as Cordelia, John Shrapnel as Gloucester and especially Tobias Menzies as Edgar/Poor Tom are all good. Forbes Masson’s Fool keeps reappearing wordlessly after going to bed at noon, with the suggestion he’s a victim of the war. Tempting though it is to find a rationale for his disappearance, it’s more authentically Shakespearian to leave us with the mystery. Jonjo O’Neill’s Edmund is a cheeky Irish chappie, devoid of any real malignity.

Postlethwaite himself, most crucially of all, fails as Lear. “Touch me with noble anger,” he mumbles. If only. He’s more like a slightly bewildered OAP, cross with the council for not emptying his dustbins. We may not want him roaring around and emoting like Henry Irving, but we do need rather more than this. “I pray you, father, being weak, seem so,” Regan scolds. But he seems weak already. Postlethwaite was in hospital with an allergy only days before, so perhaps this hopelessly underpowered aspect of the production, at least, may improve.

Among the most unforgivable low points are a shallow, sadistic blinding of Gloucester. An old man being tortured is quite bad enough. Here we have accompanying music on a tinny transistor radio, to show the director has seen Reservoir Dogs, and the vile but delicate hints of Regan’s sexual arousal are crudely travestied as she and Cornwall break off in mid-deoculation to snog. She appears to climax when stabbing the serving-man to death, and she sucks out Gloucester’s second eye herself and spits it, splat, on the floor. At this moment of gross grand guignol, some younger audience members laughed, which was good criticism. We were teetering perilously close to the disaster of Peter O’Toole’s Macbeth.

Lowest point of all comes near the end, with the reunion of Lear and Gloucester, which properly done is a reunion almost as poignant as that of Lear and Cordelia. Lear has just finished his crazed “Let copulation thrive!” rant; yet, recognising he is still every inch a king, the blinded Gloucester kneels to kiss his hand. Ah, but you see, while going on about copulation, the wacky old octogenarian has been, well, whacking off. So when Lear tells Gloucester to wipe his hand before kissing it, he means . . . By this time, you’re wondering whether Goold has been covertly replaced as director by Russell Brand.

King Lear has been done worse before, of course - much worse. In one German production in the 1970s, Lear sexually assaulted Cordelia at their reunion and carried her naked on stage at the end. This production isn’t that bad, at least. But to take this noblest and wildest work of Shakespeare’s imagination and make it tawdry still makes for a sad spectacle.

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