A major West End transfer has been announced for Chichester Festival Theatre’s critically-acclaimed production of Shakespeare’s King Lear, which will run at the Duke of York’s Theatre in London for 100 performances only from 11th July to 3rd November 2018.
Directed by Jonathan Munby, this intimate and contemporary production ran for a sold-out season at Chichester Festival Theatre’s Minerva Theatre in autumn 2017.
The ensemble of actors will include Ian McKellen as King Lear, returning to the Duke of York’s Theatre where he made his West End debut in the 1964 production of A Scent of Flowers. McKellen has enjoyed an illustrious career on stage and screen, not least inhabiting some of Shakespeare’s most iconic roles including Hamlet, Macbeth, Iago, Richard II and III as well as in previous productions of King Lear as Edgar, Kent and in the title role.
Full casting for the West End production of King Lear will be announced in due course.
Two ageing fathers – one a King, one his courtier – reject the children who truly love them. Their blindness unleashes a tornado of pitiless ambition and treachery as family and state are plunged into a violent power struggle with shocking ends.
Tender, brutal, moving and epic, King Lear is considered by many to be the greatest tragedy ever written.
