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.
Much of Jackson's performance takes place on the elocutionary level. She doesn't so much speak her lines as seethe them. Vowels are stretched for whooshing emphasis; consonants are crashed upon with the force of a speeding car against a highway divider. The diction is so pyrotechnical that it may come as a surprise to learn that Jackson's Lear is more personalized this time around, more human. In London, she was a stylized archetype waging war against the gods. Here, she's a declining father whose dictatorial temperament is making for a rough ending. Unfortunately, the production and her performance often seem at loggerheads.
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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