Lost Lear

Winner of The Scotsman Fringe First Award 2025

A moving and darkly comic remix of Shakespeare’s play told from the point of view of Joy, a person with dementia, who is living in an old memory of rehearsing King Lear.

Joy’s delicately maintained reality is upended by the arrival of her estranged son who, being cast as Cordelia, must find a way to speak his piece from within the limited role he’s given.

Using puppetry, projection and live video effects, the audience are landed in Joy’s world as layers of her past and present, fiction and reality, overlap and distort.

Lost Lear is a thought provoking meditation on theatre, artifice and the possibility of communicating across the chasms between us.

Lost Lear is part of the Traverse's £1 Ticket Project.

Image: Pato Cassinoni

Funded by Culture Ireland, the Arts Council of Ireland and supported by Fishamble’s New Play Clinic.

The Traverse Theatre is funded by Creative Scotland and the City of Edinburgh Council.

Reviews:

★★★★★ 'Stingingly insightful, invigorating our thinking about a familiar text and contemporising its world of cognitive loss and parental dereliction' - Telegraph​​

★★★★★ 'It is devastating stuff, deftly done' ​- The Stage

★★★★★ 'An astonishing piece of theatre' - Financial Times

​​★★★★★ 'Colley's Lost Lear is a theatrical tour de force that bravely visits painful places to tenderly illuminate them' ​- The Arts Review

​​★★★★★ 'Brilliantly conceived and executed... remarkable achievement' ​- The Examiner

★★★★★ 'Flawless' - British Theatre Guide

★★★★★ 'The most brilliant creative twist' - Edinburgh Festivals Mag

★★★★★ 'Pure genius' - Binge Fringe

★★★★★ 'Absorbing… Bowe gives a remarkable performance' - Irish Mail on Sunday

★★★★★ 'Delivers a forceful punch in the gut'-The Arts Desk

★★★★★ 'A deeply accomplished and moving piece of work' - Across the Arts

★★★★★ 'Profound' - Corr Blimey

★★★★★ 'Wonderful, insightful theatre' - Three Weeks Edinburgh

★★★★★ 'Staggeringly empathetic' - LondonTheatre1

★★★★★ 'A clever, multi-faceted drama' - Bouquets & Brickbats

★★★★★ 'This is a production that resists tidy catharsis – rightly so – but the emotional clarity never blurs. What remains is pathos without mawkishness, intelligence without chill, and a hard, resilient sort of hope' - Broadway Baby

★★★★★ 'A must see' - Broadway Ben

★★★★★ 'Inventive' - Mickey Jo Theatre

★★★★★ 'Astounding… richly-layered' - WhatsOnStage

★★★★★ 'Lost Lear is a supremely powerful piece of work that weaves and unravels the most extraordinary of scenarios. A shadowing curtain provides a divide between truth and expression and, when you watch it draw for the final time, you will be very glad you did' - EdFestMag

★★★★★ 'Heartbreaking' - Counter Culture

★★★★ 'A wonderfully unexpected experience' - The Scotsman

★★★★ 'As intelligent as it is moving' - The Times

★★★★ '(A) fascinating contemporary remix' - Lyn Gardner

★★★★ 'A crisp, fresh reinterpretation' - Fest

★★★★ 'Profoundly human' - All Edinburgh Theatre

'A wonderfully sensitive and theatrical exploration of dementia' - Fringe Review

Award nominations:

Best New Play at the Irish Times Theatre Awards

Audience Choice at the Irish Times Theatre Awards

Best AV Design at the Irish Times Theatre Awards

Best Supporting Actor at the Irish Times Theatre Awards

If you have access requirements, please contact our Sales and Welcome Team on boxoffice@traverse.co.uk or 0131 228 1404 so we can arrange reserved seating for you and discuss how else we can best support your visit.