Inside Opening Night of Broadway's Gender-Bending King Lear, Starring Glenda Jackson
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- Опубліковано 26 сер 2024
- Shakespeare's King Lear returned to Broadway last night in a new production directed by Sam Gold, with Tony Award winner Glenda Jackson taking on the title role. The starry cast also features Ruth Wilson, Jayne Houdyshell, Pedro Pascal, Russell Harvard, and John Douglas Thompson, among others, who are performing Gold's new take on the epic tragedy at the Cort Theatre. They may have just done three-and-a-half hours of Shakespeare, Jackson and the rest of the company still took time after the curtain came down to talk to us about this grand revival.
It's like college all over again. I went to a women's college, and our Shakespeare performance troupe has done productions with traditional leads, gender bending certain roles, and my favorite production: Macbeth with a lesbian power couple!
In the summer of 1979 I was 20 years old. I was skinny and I knew everything. I was going to be president. I was studying Shakespeare and Victorian History at Cambridge University in England, Christ's College, the alma mater of Milton, Darwin, and Erasmus (and, later, Sacha Baron Cohen). We used to take the 45 minute train ride from Cambridge into Liverpool Street Station in London to watch theatre there. We saw Derek Jacobi as Hamlet at the National Theatre, with Charleton Heston seated about six rows in front of us. Not a prop on the stage, but for Yorick's skull. We also saw Glenda Jackson, in that summer of '79, at the Old Vic Theatre, performing Cleopatra. A more beautiful woman has never set foot on the stage. She took my breath away. Again, not a single prop on stage. At age 20, along the Thames, in 1979, anything was possible. Thus, when Cleopatra looked out from a cliff as her beloved Antony was defeated in battle, you were THERE... two thousand years earlier, transported back in time. It was and has remained one of the great thrills of my life. Fast forward 40 years to now, 2019. Eighty-two-year-old Glenda Jackson (I'm not 20 anymore, either), following a highly acclaimed run in London, stars in the lead role as King Lear on Broadway, in the historic Cort Theatre, on West 48th Street. She is as beautiful as ever. We will be seeing her this Saturday night. Forty years later.... Life is good!
I saw this production last Sunday. I had a few quibbles with some of the staging (for one, they placed the intermission far too late in the play), but all of the actors were amazing. Ruth Wilson was brilliant as the Fool, and John Douglas Thompson was so good as Kent that if you didn't know the title of the play you would think it was about him. We saw the understudy for Edmund, Ian Lassiter, who was damn near perfect in the part. And yes, Glenda Jackson was literally awesome.
I should've pursued theater! My literature professor was ecstatic at me when we had our Midsummer Night's Dream! I got sterling A++!
I didnt realize the actor who played Duke of Cornwell needed translation! I actually thought it was part of the stage design! Havard is such a brilliant actor!
Hadassah Tabak excuse me, how they did in the play because he cant talk. he use sign language in the play too?
Hadassah Tabak wow thats incredible, and really cool to people with different capacities.
Hadassah Tabak totally agree!
more oportunities for everyone! thank you for reply me
Hi, I know I’m late to the game with this comment and you may already know or may not even care but I’m going to say either way! The person voicing the Duke of Cornwall in this production, opposite the brilliant Russell Harvard is the equally brilliant Michael Arden.
Solo me gusta Pedro Pascal❤️
Same. I only watched this for him
Solo estoy aquí por Pedro Pascal 💞🤩
Where oh where can I watch this 😢
Si es Chileno es Weno XD !!!
Sarah Bernhardt played "Hamlet" in 1899. "Gender Bending" Glenda Jackson,( & Co.) in this production of "King Lear" is way OVERDUE....