Why King Charles III is a great play - both on stage and on film

This post on Mike Bartlett's "future history" play, King Charles III, which imagines the outset of the reign of the likely future king of the UK, will inevitably touch on the same points as the play, which we saw a few years ago - and will begin with kudos for dear friend Margot Leicester, who plays with solemnity and dignity and role of the once-outcast wife, Camilla. And in fact every performance both on stage and in film - with special praise for the late Tim Pigott-Smith, faultless in the title role. The great beauty of both play and film comes from Bartlett's ingenious use of blank verse in contemporary prose, including a few rhymed couplets to end scenes, which immediately and inevitably calls up comparisons w/ Shakespeare, the King plays/history plays in particular - and can stand up to the comparison! The Sh echoes abound throughout the show, allusions to the Scottish tragedy (with Kate/Katherine in the villainous role and William as her pliant stooge), Lear, Hamlet (esp in the use of soliloquies, the best use of such since House of Cards, British v.), Henry IV (with Harry pursuing a path similar to that of his forebear - though with more of a focus on his romance w/ a "commoner" - and, though I may be wrong here, a different outcome in the movie cf the play), and possibly even Measure for Measure (the prince learning from his time with the "common-folk," and maybe Lear as well. The film does a nice job, under Rupert Goold's direction, opening the play up with more ambitious scenes of rioting in the streets, and both film and play make the seemingly esoteric fight between the new King and "his" prime minister engaging and high-stakes: as thoughtful, powerful, and ambitious political drama that pays homage to a great theatrical tradition but that seems completely contemporary - not jsut to the British but to American audiences as well.