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.
That previous King Lear was staged at London's Old Vic in 2016, under the direction of Deborah Warner, renowned for her innovative interpretations of classic works, including her collaborations with another great actress from across the pond, Ireland's Fiona Shaw. Having missed that acclaimed staging, I can only speculate that Jackson was as magnificent as she is in this current incarnation-and as generous, for Gold's Lear is as much a showcase for excellent ensemble acting as it is a star vehicle.
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.
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