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.
Jackson's performance (androgynous, sharp and emphatic) is superb - at first. Beginning with the famous storm sequence, her transition into Lear's state of madness is underwhelming. She essentially remains the same as before, just a bit sillier and looser. Similarly, the production as a whole loses impact as it goes along, owing to its extended length and the fact that many of its original flourishes begin to lose their luster and feel strained and disjointed.
Like a lot of intense, progressive, secular work in this time of revolutionary exploration on Broadway, Gold's 'King Lear' just has a better understanding of what needs to go than what needs to take its place. It wrestles mightily with the play's inherent moralism, religiosity and conservatism, and its demands that we feel our obligations. It seems to say that the old white guys made their mess all on their own.
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