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.
The joy of watching Glenda Jackson as Lear in Sam Gold's lean and clear production is that she doesn't approach every well-known speech or phrasing at a grandiloquent gallop. Jackson's most noticeable verbal extravagance is an almost comically elongated rolling of her r's, and so 'crawl' becomes crrrrrrrrrawl.' (She also played Lear in 2016 in the U.K., though in a different, critically hailed production; it too rang with the present-day echoes of Brexit.)
Gold's production is full of interesting directorial choices that do not quite cohere into a shared universe for King Lear's characters to inhabit. The subtle Ruth Wilson plays Cordelia with soulful, depressive interiority-in a wise stroke of casting, she doubles as the Fool-while the hyperintense Aisling O'Sullivan, as Regan, looks at every moment like lasers are about to shoot from her eyes. Jayne Houdyshell, John Douglas Thompson and Dion Johnstone offer conventional turns as the play's Lear loyalists; Sean Carvajal flails through the thankless role of Edgar. The Duke of Cornwall is played, in a kilt, by deaf actor Russell Harvard, with Michael Arden signing translation.
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Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee |
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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 |
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