Glenda Jackson, just coming off her run in Three Tall Women on Broadway, has already set the date of her return.
Jackson will appear as the title character in King Lear in the play's Broadway run next year.
Jackson is no stranger to this role, playing it previously in 2016 at London's Old Vic. The Broadway production will be entirely different, with new staging.
Thrilling, cluttered, inventive and exhausting, Sam Gold's King Lear, which stars an impish and imperious Glenda Jackson, throws a stack of director's theater clichés at its marble walls. Some of them stick. Running three and a half hours (padding out the folio with bits of the quarto, like the mock trial scene), the production brings avant-garde techniques to Broadway with variable success. Some of the performances are exhilarating - Jackson, of course, Ruth Wilson, Elizabeth Marvel, Matt Maher in his Broadway debut - some aren't and the storytelling dazzles, then rambles.
Wilson, her vocal delivery as elastic, youthful and whoop-whooping as Jackson's is throaty and grave, is handed one of Gold's strongest theatrical ideas late in the play, as the Fool prepares to take his leave, Cordelia soon to return (in all-black pseudo-Marxist revolutionary garb, no less). Scholars have long debated on whether the Fool is actually Cordelia in disguise, and judging from a simple, revealing coup de theatre, Gold suggests he has the answer. It isn't the first or last moment of truth in this extraordinary production.
| 1754 | Broadway |
Broadway |
| 1905 | Broadway |
Broadway |
| 1906 | Broadway |
Broadway |
| 1907 | Broadway |
Broadway |
| 1907 | Broadway |
Broadway |
| 1907 | Broadway |
Broadway |
| 1909 | Broadway |
Broadway |
| 1911 | Broadway |
Broadway |
| 1915 | Broadway |
Broadway |
| 1917 | Broadway |
Broadway |
| 1918 | Broadway |
Broadway |
| 1923 | Broadway |
Broadway |
| 1930 | Broadway |
Broadway |
| 1930 | Broadway |
Broadway |
| 1947 | Broadway |
Broadway |
| 1950 | Broadway |
Broadway |
| 1962 | Off-Broadway |
Off-Broadway |
| 1968 | Broadway |
Broadway |
| 1973 | Off-Broadway |
Off-Broadway |
| 1978 | Off-Broadway |
Off-Broadway |
| 1982 | Off-Broadway |
Off-Broadway |
| 1990 | Off-Broadway |
Off-Broadway |
| 1996 | Off-Broadway |
Off-Broadway |
| 2004 | Broadway |
Lincoln Center Revival Broadway |
| 2006 | Off-Broadway |
Off-Broadway |
| 2007 | Off-Broadway |
Off-Broadway |
| 2011 | Off-Broadway |
Public Theater Production Off-Broadway |
| 2014 | Off-Broadway |
Off-Broadway |
| 2014 | Off-Broadway |
Public Theater's Shakespeare in the Park Off-Broadway |
| 2016 | West End |
Old Vic Revival Production West End |
| 2018 | West End |
Chichester Festival Theatre West End Revival West End |
| 2019 | Broadway |
Broadway Revival Broadway |
| 2023 | West End |
West End |
| 2024 | Off-Broadway |
Off-Broadway Production Off-Broadway |
| 2026 | Off-Broadway |
Off-Broadway |
| Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play | Ruth Wilson |
| 2019 | Drama League Awards | Distinguished Performance Award | Ruth Wilson |
| 2019 | Drama League Awards | Outstanding Revival of a Broadway or Off-Broadway Play | King Lear |
| 2019 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Actress in a Play | Glenda Jackson |
| 2019 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play | Ruth Wilson |
Videos