SHE'S THE KING
82-year-old Glenda Jackson returns to New York, this time as Shakespeare’s aging, raging monarch
‘WOULD you like a cup of tea?” an assistant asks Glenda Jackson as she leaves a rehearsal room.
“What I would like,” says this great lady of the theater, “is a bloody glass of wine.”
Well, she deserves one. The play Jackson’s rehearsing is “King Lear,” and the 82-year-old is not a supporting player. While many actors her age are retired or camping it up in bit parts in franchise films, Jackson’s tackling the title role, which clocks in at nearly 1,000 lines.
“King Lear” begins previews Feb. 28. For Jackson, it’s a remarkable third act in a remarkable career.
A member of the Royal Shakespeare Company in the 1960s, she gave now legendary performances as Charlotte Corday in “Marat/Sade” and Ophelia in “Hamlet.” She won an Oscar for “Women in Love” in 1971 and then another in 1974 for “A Touch of Class.” She also picked up two Emmys playing Queen Elizabeth I in “Elizabeth R,” a 1970s BBC series that found a devoted following on PBS.
And then, in 1992, she chucked her acting career for politics, winning a La- bour seat in the UK’s House of Commons.
“Both sides of the house expected me to be an airhead or a diva,” she says. “Either I was going to fall flat on my face, or I was going to demand a great deal of attention all the time.”
In fact, she served 23 years, roasting her own prime minister — Tony Blair — for joining the United States in the war against Iraq and then attacking Margaret Thatcher’s legacy days after Thatcher’s death.
When she left politics in 2015, she had no idea what she would do next.
“I didn’t think about going back to the theater at all,” she says. And then she went to Barcelona to see a good friend, the Spanish actress Núria Espert, do Lear. Espert thought Jackson should to it, too.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Jackson said. “They will never let me do Lear in England.”
The Old Vic was courting her, but sent her a play she didn’t like. When she suggested doing “Lear” instead, the theater, to her surprise, said yes.
“I was not interested in doing this as a genderbender battle,” she says. “But as a member of Parliament, I visited old people’s homes and I noticed that as we get older, the absolutes that constitute male and female begin to fray. They get a bit misty and foggy. That I find interesting.”
London critics raved about her performance in the 2016 staging, but were mixed on Deborah Warner’s direction. The Broadway production, directed by Sam Gold, is new and features Jayne Houdyshell as Gloucester, Ruth Wilson as Cordelia and Elizabeth Marvel as Goneril.
Jackson did seven performances a week in London, but demand to see her was so great, the Old Vic added an eighth performance at the end of the run. (She’s doing seven performances per week in previews here and will go to eight after the show opens April 4.)
“The first time I did that eighth performance, the rest of the cast were waiting for me to die,” she says. “I don’t know if they were disappointed or not, but the play has an energy of its own. And if you tap into that, it feeds you, it carries you along. You just have to go with it.”
Between “Lear” in London and “Lear” in New York, Jackson managed to squeeze in a revival of Edward Albee’s “Three Tall Women,” for which she won the Tony.
It’s a play about death, but Jackson brought a great deal of humor to it. And that is one of her underappreciated talents. She’s thought of as an intensely dramatic actress — see “Sunday Bloody Sunday” — but she has first-rate comic gifts. British audiences loved her appearances in the 1970s comedyvariety show “Morecambe & Wise,” singing and dancing with the music hall performers Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise. (The YouTube clips are delightful.)
“Eric gave me one of the best notes I was ever given: ‘Louder and faster,’ ” she says. “That’s right on the button.”
Has she found some humor in “Lear”?
“Quite a bit,” she says, smiling. “I don’t push it, but if it’s there, I do it.”