Kate Fleetwood, Anna Maxwell Martin and Olivia Vinall Join National Theatre's KING LEAR, Opening Jan 2014

The Daily Mail reports that Kate Fleetwood and Anna Maxwell Martin will play KING LEAR's daughters Goneril and Regan, respectively, in The National Theatre's upcoming production of the Shakespearen tragedy. Olivia Vinall, who is currently appearing in the National's OTHELLO, will portray Cordelia.

Read the original report here.

The three women will join previously announced Simon Russell Beale as Lear. Sam Mendes will direct the cast, which also features Adrian Scarborough as The Fool and Stanley Townsend as Kent. Rehearsals are set to begin in November for a January 2014 opening.

For those of you who aren't already familiar with the plot, KING LEAR follows its title character into madness after he divides his estate between two of his three daughters and reaps the consequences.

Fleetwood (pictured) was nominated for a Tony Award for her performance in Macbeth at the Chichester Festival, which transferred to the West End, followed by Broadway in 2008. She has also appeared in the UK tours of The Comic Mysteries and Romeo and Juliet, as well as Arabian Nights and Nativity at the Young Vic, The Two Noble Kinsmen and The Tempest at Shakespeare's Globe, Love's Labour's Lost at The National Theatre, Hecuba at Donmar, Pericles and The Winter's Tale for RSC and many more.

Maxwell's many theatre credits include The National Theatre's The Coast of Utopia, Honour, Three Sisters, His Dark Materials, Songs of Innocence and Experience, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and Snowbound, the Royal Court's Dumb Show and Top Girls, Pencil at the Old Vic and Measure for Measure at the Almeida. Maxwell starred as Sally Bowles in the Lyric Theatre production of Cabaret in 2006. She was nominated for an Olivier Award for her portrayal of Lyra in His Dark Materials in 2005 and won a BAFTA for her turn as Esther Summerson in Bleak House, with another BAFTA win for playing N in Poppy Shakespeare.

Photo Credit: Peter James Zielinski