All hail Ian’s reign as Lear in the West End
AT 78, Ian McKellen is returning to the West End as King Lear, 66 years after he performed his first Shakespearean role when just a schoolboy.
The celebrated actor will lead director Jonathan Munby’s production of Lear — which ran at the Chichester Festival Theatre’s Minerva studio last autumn — into the Duke of York’s Theatre for a 16-week season from July 12.
McKellen will be joined by Sinead Cusack, who will — as she did in West Sussex — play Lear’s loyal courtier Kent.
I remember Munby lamenting the fact that ‘there aren’t enough female roles in the classical repertoire’.
When he suggested the idea of playing Kent to Cusack, she jumped at it.
Her Kent was a female character, and not simply an actress playing a man.
McKellen’s first brush with the Bard was in 1952: he played steward Malvolio in a young players’ production of Twelfth Night.
Munby’s modern-dress version of Lear included Dervla Kirwan, Kirsty Bushell and Tamara Lawrance as Lear’s daughters Goneril, Regan and Cordelia.
However, not all the Chichester company members will be available for the transfer so, clearly, those parts will be re-cast.
Munby and Daniel Evans, Chichester’s artistic chief, had wanted to capture the play on film, but the small Minerva auditorium posed too many difficulties.
The intention now is to try to film at the Duke of York’s. Negotiations are ongoing, but I understand there’s a strong desire to capture on camera what may be one of McKellen’s last stage roles.
The London move is being orchestrated by the Ambassador Theatre Group and Chichester and they are also looking at the possibility of it going to Broadway.
‘New York producers are biting everyone’s arms off to get at it,’ I was told.