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.
It's often said that there's no greater grief than a parent's loss of a child, so it follows that there's no more devastating moment in King Lear than when the monarch's pitiless odyssey through familial betrayal, rage and madness, triggered by his own blind vanity, leaves him cradling the dead body of the one daughter whose love for him was pure. That goes double when the title character's tragic arc is explored, in Sam Gold's aggressively modern, gender-blind production, by the magnificent Glenda Jackson. The searing pathos of Lear's abject diminishment seems all the more powerful given the steely authority that precedes it.
Shakespeare nailed it: 'Though she be little, she is fierce.' Glenda Jackson may look frail, but the 82-year-old legend performs the noble task of rescuing director Sam Gold's rickety Broadway production of Shakespeare's greatest tragedy. To be sure, the salvage job is all technique. But although Jackson fails to wring tears, let alone blood, from this production, the sheer intelligence of her performance makes it memorable.
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1950 | Broadway |
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1962 | Off-Broadway |
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1968 | Broadway |
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1973 | Off-Broadway |
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1978 | Off-Broadway |
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1982 | Off-Broadway |
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1990 | Off-Broadway |
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1996 | Off-Broadway |
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2004 | Broadway |
Lincoln Center Revival Broadway |
2006 | Off-Broadway |
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2007 | Off-Broadway |
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2011 | Off-Broadway |
Public Theater Production Off-Broadway |
2014 | Off-Broadway |
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Public Theater's Shakespeare in the Park Off-Broadway |
2016 | West End |
Old Vic Revival Production West End |
2018 | West End |
Chichester Festival Theatre West End Revival West End |
2019 | Broadway |
Broadway Revival Broadway |
2023 | West End |
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2024 | Off-Broadway |
Off-Broadway Production Off-Broadway |
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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