Kevin Kline Set for Public's King Lear; Lapine to Direct

Tony Award-winner Kevin Kline will play the proud monarch of the title in the Public Theater's upcoming fall production of Shakespeare's King Lear.

At the opening night of the Macbeth--currently running at the Central Park's Delacorte Theatre and starring Liev Schrieber and Jennifer Ehle--Public Theater artistic director Oskar Eustis announced that the Public Theater would be staging the classic tragedy in the fall.  Kline had also been present in the Public's 2006-2007 announcement, but the play itself had been unspecified.

Kline had previously been involved in a workshop for the Public.  Tony Award-winner James Lapine (Spelling Bee, Into the Woods, Sunday in the Park with George) will direct King Lear, in which a king's misplaced anger at one of his daughters leads to his downfall.

Kline, a Julliard graduate and former member of the famed Acting Company, most recently took on the role of Falstaff in the acclaimed 2003 Lincoln Center production of Henry IV (for which he received a Tony Award nomination).  Other Shakespearean credits include Friar Pete in John Houseman's 1973 staging of Measure for Measure, as well as the title roles in Hamlet, Richard III and Henry V, and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing at the Public Theater.  Other Broadway credits include Ivanov, Arms and the Man, Three Sisters, On the Twentieth Century and The Pirates of Penzance; he won Tony Awards for the latter two shows.  Screen credits include De-Lovely, Life as a House, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Chaplin, The Pirates of Penzance, Sophie's Choice and A Fish Called Wanda, for which he earned an Academy Award.

Visit www.publictheater.org for more information.