KING LEAR

By William Shakespeare

  • Minerva Theatre Chichester
    Duke of York’s Theatre West End

  • Director - Jonathan Munby
    Designer - Paul Wills
    Lighting Designer - Oliver Fenwick
    Music & Sound Design - Max & Ben Ringham
    Movement Director - Lucy Cullingford
    Casting Director - Anne McNulty CDG
    Associate Director - Rupert Hands

  • King Lear - Ian McKellen
    Gloucester - Danny Webb
    Kent - Sinead Cusack
    Fool - Lloyd Hutchinson
    Edgar - Jonathan Bailey / Luke Thompson
    Edmund - Damien Moloney / James Corrigan
    Cordelia - Tamara Lawrence / Anita-Joy Uwajeh
    Regan - Kirsty Bushell
    Goneril - Dervka Kirwan / Claire Pryce
    Osric - Michael Matus

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  • Ian McKellen reigns supreme in this triumphant production. The chamber setting undoubtedly plays to his strengths as an understated, often exhilaratingly rapid speaker of Shakespeare’s verse.

    DAILY TELEGRAPH

    ★★★★★

  • Ian McKellen adds to the roster of his greatest achievements with this extraordinarily moving portrayal of King Lear.

    INDEPENDENT

    ★★★★★

  • When a performance is as voraciously anticipated as Ian McKellen’s portrayal of King Lear there is an inevitable risk that reality must defeat expectation. But McKellen does not disappoint. Nor is he abandoned to the audience alone. The distinguished supporting cast ranges from Dervla Kirwan to Sinead Cusack. Director Jonathan Munby avoids all the inherent traps. The modern setting, raw and visually potent, reinforces the enduring relevance of Shakespeare’s emotional truth.

    I NEWSPAPER

    ★★★★★

  • But it is McKellen’s detailed performance that’s the production’s triumph. With finely measured intelligence he traces Lear’s inexorable movement from pomp via rage and shambolic delirium to melancholy tenderness and the agony of belated self-knowledge.

    EVENING STANDARD

    ★★★★★

  • This King Lear is an intensely moving experience, not just for its piercing portrait of advancing mortality and a man losing his grip both on power and of himself, but also for the melancholic weight of age that McKellen inevitably now brings to it. Jonathan Munby's production has the drive and cross-cut dramatic urgency of a Netflix thriller. Oliver Fenwick's lighting and the music by Ben and Max Ringham become like additional characters populating and animating the stage. It is also blessed with luxury casting throughout.

    THE STAGE

    ★★★★★

  • In Jonathan Munby’s thriller-paced and intimate production, McKellen meticulously explores Lear’s delusions of grandeur. The transformation from monarch to shuffling wreck is a complete portrait of decline, not just of a man, but of a nation too.

    METRO

    ★★★★★

  • Ian McKellen delivers a profound portrait of a soul in torment. Jonathan Munby’s smart, lucid production features plenty of pomp and circumstance, and a superbly detailed performance by McKellen.

    GUARDIAN

    ★★★★★

  • Danny Webb’s Gloucester is among the finest I have seen, compact of dignity and decency and thus much more desolate after he is blinded.

    FINANCIAL TIMES

    ★★★★

  • Paul Wills' deceptively simple set serves as palace and hovel, and transports us from heath to Dover cliffs in an instant. The action is also complemented by an atmospheric score from Ben and Max Ringham.

    WHATSONSTAGE

    ★★★★★

  • Clear, thoughtful, terrifically well-paced

    MAIL ON SUNDAY

    ★★★★

  • Munby maintains the momentum of a political thriller

    DAILY EXPRESS

    ★★★★

  • Thoughtful and nuanced

    SUNDAY TIMES

    ★★★★

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