King Lear, RST, Stratford; Country Music, Royal Court Upstairs, London

Foppery, excellent and otherwise

Fifty years before Charles I's head was cut off, his predecessor was voicing firm opinions about kingship. In fact, James I penned The True Law Of Free Monarchies, a treatise underlining a king's divine right and natural duty to govern his subjects like a caring father with children. Political tensions then arose over James' handling of Parliament. An excellent programme note about this accompanies the RSC's new staging of King Lear, reminding you just how topical Shakespeare's tragedy was with its anxieties about regal and paternal authority. The note, furthermore, draws attention to parallels between this play and the contemporaneous Annesley family's court case, where three daughters (of whom the youngest was called Cordell) argued over their aged father's sanity and whether or not he was fit to govern or divide his estate.

Then we have Bill Alexander's production: a bemusing hotchpotch of epochs. The costumes by Kandis Cook (of whom one is enough to spoil the broth) mix up medieval cuffs, 18th-century gaiters, Sam Browne belts and breastplates. Corin Redgrave's Lear looks like a moustachioed Victorian colonel while John Normington, as his Fool, jigs around half-heartedly in ye olde jester's hat, with bells on. Talk about distracting. No wonder the King goes mad. When he wakes from slumber near the end and is still confused, saying "I am mainly ignorant/What place this is", one is tempted to mutter that he's not the only one.

I also began to suspect that Alexander had lost his marbles during the storm scene, as the outcasts on the heath cried out at the howling gale but appeared to be under some meteorological delusion. Scarcely a zephyr stirs the soft fog of dry ice. In emotional terms, this is also a peculiarly unmoving production. The RSC's Tragedy season has been almost devoid of pathos so far. Some cast members here milk the poetry until it sounds like mawkish sentimentality. Pal Aron's Edgar is the worst culprit, ludicrously intoning and contriving to hyperventilate histrionically at the same time. What's happened to the RSC's coaching in voice and verse speaking?

Still, this production has its strengths and is the best work in the mainhouse season to date. Aron grows disturbing when transformed into the traumatised Mad Tom, having almost epileptic attacks of grief. The last moments are outstandingly poignant too, as Redgrave's Lear passes away in a serene daze, besides Cordelia's corpse, and Louis Hilyer's Kent - casting aside his rugged manner - desperately hugs the King's body in his arms.

Alexander notably explores the civilised versus the feral, and inversions of young and old. David Hargreaves' silver-bearded Gloucester is a loveable, wide-eyed innocent. Meanwhile Matthew Rhys is riveting as his deceptive bastard-son Edmund: ice-cool yet seething underneath. Acting and joking are intelligently pursued as running themes as well. In a way, this Lear plays the fool right from the start. He's a bullying, self-appointed entertainer, with a trace of Osborne's Archie Rice whom Redgrave recently portrayed in Liverpool. He forces his daughters to take part in his slightly crazy game of "Which of you doth love us most". All three sisters clearly hate and dread his violent rages. What's intriguing is how nervous he is behind the domineering facade, and is easily reduced to tears when the girls turn the tables. Thereafter, unfortunately, his increasing madness is not less convincing.

Meanwhile, the thuggish-looking actor Lee Ross has a wicked gleam in his eye in Country Music by Simon Stephens. Ross's Jamie is on the run in a stolen motor, alternately swigging Coke and tequila, grinning at his teenage girlfriend, Lynsey. He doesn't see he's in big trouble but we certainly do. It's a wee bit of a give away when he says stuff like: "I found him. And I glassed the cunt. I went down the offie ... This kid started getting lippy. So I stabbed him. Took all the stuff. Went outside. Found this cunt [the car] down Valley Parade. Came and found you. I thought you'd be happy." Sally Hawkins' Lynsey is not best pleased. She'd rather go back to the children's home, but Jamie is heading for Southend with dreams of a new life. He ends up spending the next two decades in the slammer.

This short play is, regrettably, a disappointing follow-up to Stephens' pub drama, Christmas. It feels like an earlier work. The playwright has worked with prisoners, but too often here his lowlife characters come across as a bunch of accumulated clichés. Gordon Anderson's staging, co-presented by ATC, suffers from too much stasis and unnecessarily laboured scene changes, but his actors are admirable. Laura Elphinstone makes a promising debut as Jamie's long-lost daughter in the final, hesitant reunion scene, and Ross brings out all Stephens' dramatic strengths, brooding menacingly and being a hard lad with a surprisingly soft centre.

k.bassett@independent.co.uk

'King Lear': RST, Stratford (0870 609 1110) to 14 October; 'Country Music': Royal Court, London SW1 (020 7565 5100), to 17 July