Where was Nahum Tate's adaptation of King Lear first performed?
Riverside Shakespeare Company
In 1985 the Riverside Shakespeare Company presented the New York premiere of "The History of King Lear", adapted with a happy ending by 18th-century English Poet Laureate, Nahum Tate, from William Shakespeare's "King Lear". The production was directed by W. Stuart McDowell, produced by Andrew B. Harris, who had joined Riverside as its executive director at the beginning of the season.
Becket
The first London production was at the Aldwych Theatre on 11 July 1961, directed by Peter Hall for the Royal Shakespeare Company. Eric Porter played Becket and Christopher Plummer the King, with Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies, Peter Jeffrey, Diana Rigg, Ian Holm and Roy Dotrice in the cast. The play later transferred to the Globe Theatre. Plummer won the Evening Standard Award for his performance after taking over the part from Peter O'Toole, who broke his contract with the RSC before rehearsals began in order to take the lead in David Lean's film "Lawrence of Arabia.
Mahmoud Etemadzadeh
'King Lear' by William Shakespeare
The Tragedy of King Lear (screenplay)
The Tragedy of King Lear is an unpublished screenplay by Harold Pinter. It is an adaptation of William Shakespeare's "King Lear" and was commissioned by actor and director Tim Roth with backing from Film Four. Pinter completed the screenplay on 31 March 2000, but as of 2017 it has not been filmed. It is one of only three screenplays that Pinter adapted from another dramatist's play, the others being his screenplay adaptation of "Butley", by his good friend Simon Gray, and "Sleuth", originally written for the stage by Anthony Shaffer.
King Lear
The first recording of the Argo Shakespeare for Argo Records was "King Lear" in 1957, directed and produced by George Rylands with William Devlin in the title role, Jill Balcon as Goneril and Prunella Scales as Cordelia.
King Lear
Finnish composer Aulis Sallinen's opera "Kuningas Lear" premiered on 15 September 2000.All references to "King Lear", unless otherwise specified, are taken from the Folger Shakespeare Library's "Folger Digital Editions" texts edited by Barbara Mowat, Paul Werstine, Michael Poston, and Rebecca Niles. Under their referencing system, 1.1.246–248 means act 1, scene 1, lines 246 through 248.
Riverside Shakespeare Company
Like Tate's other immensely popular "happy ending" version of "Romeo and Juliet" (which was a central part of the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of "Nicholas Nickleby") Tate's equally popular adaptation of Shakespeare's "King Lear" was the only performed version of "King Lear" for over 150 years, beginning in the late 17th century when Tate wrote his adaptation, through the early 19th century.
Craig Lauzon
He was formerly an artistic associate at Native Earth Performing Arts, Canada's oldest First Nations performing arts company. In 2011, he starred alongside Lorne Cardinal in a production of Kenneth T. Williams' "Thunderstick", in which the two traded roles on alternate days. In 2012, he performed the role of Kent in an all-Aboriginal production of William Shakespeare's "King Lear" at the National Arts Centre, alongside a cast that also included August Schellenberg as Lear, Tantoo Cardinal as Regan, Jani Lauzon in a dual role as Cordelia and the Fool, and Billy Merasty as Gloucester.
King Leir
King Leir is an anonymous Elizabethan play about the life of the ancient Brythonic king Leir of Britain. It was published in 1605 but was entered into the Stationers' Register on 15 May 1594. The play has attracted critical attention principally for its relationship with "King Lear", Shakespeare's version of the same story.
The History of King Lear
While Tate's version proved extremely popular on the stage, the response of literary critics has generally been negative. An early example of approval from a critic is found in Charles Gildon's "Remarks on the Plays of Shakespeare" in 1710:
The King and "Cordelia" ought by no means to have dy'd, and therefore Mr "Tate" has very justly alter'd that particular, which must disgust the Reader and Audience to have Vertue and Piety meet so unjust a Reward. . . . We rejoice at the deaths of the "Bastard" and the two Sisters, as of Monsters in Nature under whom the very Earth must groan. And we see with horror and Indignation the Death of the King, "Cordelia" and "Kent".
The translator and author Thomas Cooke also gave Tate's version his blessing: in the introduction to his own play "The Triumphs of Love and Honour" (1731), he commented that Lear and Gloucester "are made sensible or their Errors, and are placed in a State of Tranquility and Ease agreeable to their Age and Condition . . . rejoicing in the Felicity of "Edgar" and "Cordelia"." Cooke added that he had "read many Sermons, but remember[ed] no one that contains so fine a Lesson of Morality as this Play."
Lear (opera)
Reimann wrote the title role specifically for the baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, who had suggested the subject to the composer as early as 1968. Reimann then received a commission from the Bavarian State Opera in 1975. The world premiere, in a production by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle with Fischer-Dieskau in the title role, occurred at the National Theatre Munich on 9 July 1978, with Gerd Albrecht conducting.
King Lear (2018 film)
King Lear is a 2018 British-American television film directed by Richard Eyre. An adaptation of the play of the same name by William Shakespeare, cut to just 115 minutes, was broadcast on BBC Two on 28 May 2018. Starring Anthony Hopkins as the title character, the adaptation is set in an alternate universe 21st-century highly militarized London and depicts the tragedy that follows when the sovereign King Lear announces the end of his reign and the division of his kingdom among his three daughters. The adaptation was met with positive reviews, who commended its acting and many singled out Hopkins for his performance in the titular role.
Vision of Lear
Vision of Lear is the first opera by Toshio Hosokawa which premiered at the Munich Biennale in 1998. The opera in two acts is an adaptation of Shakespeare's "King Lear", including elements from the traditional Japanese Noh theatre. The libretto was written in English by Tadashi Suzuki.
King Lear
In 1974, Buzz Goodbody directed "Lear", a deliberately abbreviated title for Shakespeare's text, as the inaugural production of the RSC's studio theatre The Other Place. The performance was conceived as a chamber piece, the small intimate space and proximity to the audience enabled detailed psychological acting, which was performed with simple sets and in modern dress. Peter Holland has speculated that this company/directoral decision – namely "choosing" to present Shakespeare in a small venue for artistic reasons when a larger venue was available – may at the time have been unprecedented.
David Serero (opera singer)
In January, he plays the title role of Reb Dovidl Moysheles, the Yiddish King Lear by Jacob Gordin at the Angel Orensanz Foundation in New York in partnership with the Yivo Foundation. He adapted in English and directed this revival as well as the first Cast Album Recording of that play. He performs at the Russian Culture House of London, Rossotrudnichestvo, for the Stars of the Albion Festival He stars as the King Ahasuerus in the musical "Queen Esther's Dilemma", which he directs and produces at the Center for Jewish History. He performs and hosts the 70th Anniversary of the World Health Day by the World Health Organization at the United Nations, New York.
He stars as Cyrano from Cyrano de Bergerac in New York and is the 1st French actor to play this role in English in America. He has written his own English adaptation and recorded the Cast Album Recording. In June, he stars as Don Giovanni's title role in his new adaptation in New York, Off-Broadway. He sings for the Edmond Rostand 2018 Festival with the French Military Orchestra in Paris. He plays Napoleon from the screenplay Napoleon by Stanley Kubrick, which he adapted for the stage.
Fee-fi-fo-fum
The rhyme appears in the pamphlet "Haue with You to Saffron-Walden" (published in 1596) written by Thomas Nashe (who mentions that the rhyme was already old and its origins obscure):
In William Shakespeare's play "King Lear" (c. 1605), the character Edgar exclaims:Fie, foh, and fum,
I smell the blood of a British man.The verse in "King Lear" makes use of the archaic word "fie", used to express disapproval. This word is used repeatedly in Shakespeare's works: King Lear shouts, "Fie, fie, fie! pah, pah!", and in "Antony and Cleopatra", Mark Antony's exclaims, "O fie, fie, fie!"
King Lear (1971 UK film)
King Lear is a 1971 British film adaptation of the Shakespeare play directed by Peter Brook and starring Paul Scofield.Brook's film starkly divided the critics: Pauline Kael said "I didn't just dislike this production, I hated it!" and suggested the alternative title ""Night of the Living Dead"". Yet Robert Hatch in "The Nation" thought it as "excellent a filming of the play as one can expect" and Vincent Canby in "The New York Times" called it "an exalting "Lear", full of exquisite terror". The film drew heavily on the ideas of Jan Kott, in particular his observation that "King Lear" was the precursor of absurdist theatre: in particular, the film has parallels with Beckett's "Endgame". Critics who dislike the film particularly draw attention to its bleak nature from its opening: complaining that the world of the play does not deteriorate with Lear's suffering, but commences dark, colourless and wintry, leaving (in Douglas Brode's words) "Lear, the land, and "us" with nowhere to go". Cruelty pervades the film, which does not distinguish between the violence of ostensibly good and evil characters, presenting both savagely. Paul Scofield, as Lear, eschews sentimentality: this demanding old man with a coterie of unruly knights provokes audience sympathy for the daughters in the early scenes, and his presentation explicitly rejects the tradition (as Daniel Rosenthal describes it) of playing Lear as "poor old white-haired patriarch".
Kal Naga
In September 2015, a unique musical opened at The Royal Cultural Centre of Amman, Jordan, He directed the first ever Arabic transportation of acclaimed West End musical "Oliver!" His unique and original adaptation swaps Dickensian London to a contemporary Arab city (Amman in the Jordan production). He created together with the well known Disney writer Zeinab Mobarak an adaptation that smartly kept the original Charles Dickens spirit and transported all the original songs and lyrics to the contemporary Arab culture. Maestro Nayer Nagui conducted the orchestra and coached the children singing marathon lessons which was held in Jordan mostly with Syrian refugee children.
King Lear
"King Lear" was politically controversial during the period of George III's madness, and as a result was not performed at all in the two professional theatres of London from 1811 to 1820: but was then the subject of major productions in both, within three months of his death. The 19th century saw the gradual reintroduction of Shakespeare's text to displace Tate's version. Like Garrick before him, John Philip Kemble had introduced more of Shakespeare's text, while still preserving the three main elements of Tate's version: the love story, the omission of the Fool, and the happy ending. Edmund Kean played "King Lear" with its tragic ending in 1823, but failed and reverted to Tate's crowd-pleaser after only three performances. At last in 1838 William Macready at Covent Garden performed Shakespeare's version, freed from Tate's adaptions. The restored character of the Fool was played by an actress, Priscilla Horton, as, in the words of one spectator, "a fragile, hectic, beautiful-faced, half-idiot-looking boy." And Helen Faucit's final appearance as Cordelia, dead in her father's arms, became one of the most iconic of Victorian images. John Forster, writing in the "Examiner" on 14 February 1838, expressed the hope that "Mr Macready's success has banished that disgrace [Tate's version] from the stage for ever." But even this version was not close to Shakespeare's: the 19th-century actor-managers heavily cut Shakespeare's scripts: ending scenes on big "curtain effects" and reducing or eliminating supporting roles to give greater prominence to the star. One of Macready's innovations – the use of Stonehenge-like structures on stage to indicate an ancient setting – proved enduring on stage into the 20th century, and can be seen in the 1983 television version starring Laurence Olivier.
Ursula Mohan
Ursula Mohan is a British actress. From 25 May 1966 she appeared in Sławomir Mrożek's play "Tango" at the Aldwych Theatre alongside Patience Collier, Mike Pratt, Peter Jeffrey and Dudley Sutton under director Trevor Nunn. In 2014 and 2016 she took the title role in Phil Willmott's "Queen Lear", an adaptation of William Shakespeare's "King Lear".
John Steppling (playwright)
At the beginning of the millennium, Steppling relocated to Europe. After sojourns in Paris and London, he relocated to Poland to teach at National Film School in Łódź. During his stay in Łódź, Steppling did an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s "King Lear" featuring Marian Opania, and co-starring Mick Collins. The production was done in three languages: Polish, English, and Norwegian.
Edmund Kean
Kean was the first to restore the tragic ending to Shakespeare's "King Lear", which had been replaced on stage since 1681 by Nahum Tate's happy ending adaptation "The History of King Lear". Kean had previously acted Tate's Lear, but told his wife that the London audience "have no notion of what I can do till they see me over the dead body of Cordelia." Kean played the tragic Lear for a few performances. They were not well received, though one critic described his dying scene as "deeply affecting", and with regret, he reverted to Tate.
King Leir
The records of theatre impresario Philip Henslowe show that "King Leir" was performed on 6 and 8 April 1594 at the Rose Theatre, by a cast that combined personnel from two acting companies, Queen Elizabeth's Men and Sussex's Men. Other records claim that the play was often acted, though these two are the only specific performances known. It has been suggested that Shakespeare, who was a player in the Queen's company of the 1590s, may have actually performed in "King Leir".
Donald Wolfit
Wolfit's speciality was Shakespeare. He was known especially for his performances as King Lear and Richard III. He also played Oedipus, and the lead roles in Ben Jonson's "Volpone" and Christopher Marlowe's "Tamburlaine". His touring company performed in London during the Battle of Britain in 1940 and Wolfit staged a very successful series of abridged versions of Shakespeare's plays in London during the Second World War in the early afternoon for lunchtime audiences. In January 1942, by arrangement with Lionel L. Falck, Donald Wolfit presented "Richard III" at the Strand Theatre in London. Wolfit played King Richard; others in the production included Eric Maxon (King Edward IV), and Frank Thornton (Sir William Catesby). In 1947 Wolfit proved unpopular with American critics when he took the company to Broadway. He appeared at Stratford during the 1950s in his signature role of King Lear, and was invited to play Falstaff at the RSC in 1962 but turned the offer down when he discovered Paul Scofield would be playing Lear there at the same time, saying "Lear is still the brightest jewel in my crown!" Edith Sitwell wrote to Wolfit: "The cosmic grandeur of your 'King Lear' left us unable to speak. ... all imaginable fires of agony and all the light of redemption are there."
Coriolanus
Like some of Shakespeare's other plays ("All's Well That Ends Well"; "Timon of Athens"), there is no recorded performance of "Coriolanus" prior to the Restoration. After 1660, however, its themes made it a natural choice for times of political turmoil. The first known performance was Nahum Tate's bloody 1682 adaptation at Drury Lane. Seemingly undeterred by the earlier suppression of his "Richard II", Tate offered a "Coriolanus" that was faithful to Shakespeare through four acts before becoming a Websterian bloodbath in the fifth act. A later adaptation, John Dennis's "The Invader of His Country, or The Fatal Resentment", was booed off the stage after three performances in 1719. The title and date indicate Dennis's intent, a vitriolic attack on the Jacobite 'Fifteen. (Similar intentions motivated James Thomson's 1745 version, though this bears only a very slight resemblance to Shakespeare's play. Its principal connection to Shakespeare is indirect; Thomas Sheridan's 1752 production at Smock Alley used some passages of Thomson's. David Garrick returned to Shakespeare's text in a 1754 Drury Lane production.
The King and I
In June 2014, Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris presented an English-language production of "The King and I" directed by Lee Blakeley and starring Susan Graham, who was "close to perfection as Anna", Lambert Wilson, "also excellent as the king", and Lisa Milne as Lady Thiang. "The New York Times" called it "a grand new staging that has set French critics searching for superlatives." The Renshaw production was revived again in April 2014 by Opera Australia for performances in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, directed by Renshaw and featuring Lisa McCune and Teddy Tahu Rhodes. Some critics questioned anew the portrayal of the Siamese court as barbaric and asked why a show where "the laughs come from the Thai people mis-understanding British ... culture" should be selected for revival.
King Lear
Brook's earlier vision of the play proved influential, and directors have gone further in presenting Lear as (in the words of R. A. Foakes) "a pathetic senior citizen trapped in a violent and hostile environment". When John Wood took the role in 1990, he played the later scenes in clothes that looked like cast-offs, inviting deliberate parallels with the uncared-for in modern Western societies. Indeed, modern productions of Shakespeare's plays often reflect the world in which they are performed as much as the world for which they were written: and the Moscow theatre scene in 1994 provided an example, when two very different productions of the play (those by Sergei Zhonovach and Alexei Borodin), very different from one another in their style and outlook, were both reflections on the break-up of the Soviet Union.
The History of King Lear
Although Shakespeare's entire text did not reappear on stage for over a century and a half, this does not mean that it was always completely replaced by Tate's version. Tate's version was itself subject to adaptation. It is known that Garrick used Tate's complete text in his performances in 1742, but playbills advertising performances at Lincoln's Inn Fields the following year (with an anonymous "Gentleman" playing Lear) mentioned "restorations from Shakespeare". Garrick prepared a new adaptation of Tate's version for performances given from 1756, with considerable restoration from the earlier parts of the play, although Tate's happy ending was retained, and the Fool was still omitted. Garrick's rival Spranger Barry also played Tate's Lear the same year, in a performance which, according to the poet and playwright Frances Brooke, moved the whole house to tears, though Brooke marvelled that Spranger and Garrick should both have given Tate's work "the preference to "Shakespeare"'s excellent original", and that Garrick, in particular, should "prefer the adulterated cup of "Tate" to the pure genuine draught offered him by the master he avows to serve with such fervency of devotion."
National Theatre Live
Most productions broadcast are plays performed in repertory at the Royal National Theatre, but works by other companies have been included. "A Disappearing Number" by Complicite was broadcast live from the Theatre Royal, Plymouth on 14 October 2010. The Donmar Warehouse's production of "King Lear", starring Derek Jacobi was broadcast live from Covent Garden on 3 February 2011. In the summer of 2013, a broadcast of "Macbeth" starring Kenneth Branagh and Alex Kingston was broadcast live from the Manchester International Festival on 20 July 2013. "A Streetcar Named Desire" starring Gillian Anderson was broadcast live from the Young Vic on 16 September 2014.
John Philip Kemble
In all the other great Shakespearean characters he was, according to the best critics, inferior to them, least so in Lear (though he never played Shakespeare's tragic Lear, preferring the happy ending "History of King Lear" as adapted by Nahum Tate), Hamlet and Wolsey, and most so in Shylock and Richard III. His production of "Cymbeline" was staged regularly from 1801 on. On account of the eccentricities of Sheridan, the proprietor of Drury Lane, Kemble withdrew from the management, and, although he resumed his duties at the beginning of the season 1800-1801, he at the close of 1802 finally resigned connection with it.
Riverside Shakespeare Company
Tate's adaptation of "The History of King Lear", which restored the authentic legend of the ancient king, was written without a Fool, added a confidante and a romance for Cordelia and Edgar, and culminated with the triumph of good over evil with the restoration of Lear to the throne with Kent and Gloucester at his side, and the marriage of Cordelia to Edgar.
Here Lies Love
"Here Lies Love" was performed live four times before the album was released. It was first presented as a song cycle (with vocals by Byrne, Dana Diaz-Tutaan and Ganda Suthivarakom) at the Adelaide Festival of Arts under the artistic direction of Brett Sheehy in Adelaide, Australia, on 10 March 2006 with additional dates on 13 and 14 March, and was also performed live at the Carnegie Hall in New York City on 3 February 2007, as part of the Carnegie Hall Perspectives Series.
The album was adapted into a stage musical, directed by Alex Timbers, that premiered off-Broadway at The Public Theater in New York City in 2013. It starred Ruthie Ann Miles in the title role, with Jose Llana as Ferdinand Marcos and Conrad Ricamora as Ninoy Aquino. The production played an extended run at the Public before closing in August 2013. It returned for an open-ended commercial run again at the Public in April 2014. The production closed at the Public on January 4, 2015. The production won five Lucille Lortel Awards in 2014.
National Video Archive of Performance
In 1992 the Theatre Museum, a branch museum of the Victoria & Albert Museum, began recording stage performance in the United Kingdom. The project was named the National Video Archive of Stage Performance and later renamed the National Video Archive of Performance. The model for the project was the Theatre on Film and Tape Archive at the New York Public Library at the Lincoln Center. The first production recorded was the Royal National Theatre production of "Richard III" starring Ian McKellen and directed by Richard Eyre.
Tony Britton
In September 2013 Sir Jonathan Miller directed a Gala Performance of William Shakespeare's "King Lear" at the Old Vic in London. Britton played the Earl of Gloucester.
Shakespeare in performance
Tate's "Lear" remains famous as an example of an ill-conceived adaptation arising from insensitivity to Shakespeare's tragic vision. Tate's genius was not in language - many of his interpolated lines don't even scan - but in structure; his Lear begins brilliantly with the Edmund the Bastard's first attention-grabbing speech, and ends with Lear's heroic saving of Cordelia in the prison and a restoration of justice to the throne. Tate's worldview, and that of the theatrical world that embraced (and demanded) his "happy ending" versions of the Bard's tragic works (such as "King Lear" and "Romeo and Juliet") for over a century, arose from a profoundly different sense of morality in society and of the role that theatre and art should play within that society. Tate's versions of Shakespeare see the responsibility of theatre as a transformative agent for positive change by holding a moral mirror up to our baser instincts. Tate's versions of what we now consider some of the Bard's greatest works dominated the stage throughout the 18th century precisely because the Ages of Enlightenment and Reason found Shakespeare's "tragic vision" immoral, and his tragic works unstageable. Tate is seldom performed today, though in 1985, the Riverside Shakespeare Company mounted a successful production of "The History of King Lear" at The Shakespeare Center, heralded by some as a "Lear for the Age of Ronald Reagan."
Turandot (Busoni)
The first performance in England was in London on 19 August 1966, in an English translation by Lionel Salter. The performance was broadcast on the BBC Third Programme. The American premiere was a concert performance on 10 October 1967 in New York's Philharmonic Hall, followed by a semi-staged version on 28 January 1980 at the First Presbyterian Church in Berkeley, California, conducted by the 28-year-old Kent Nagano; a fully staged performance was given on 15 November 1986 by the Connecticut Grand Opera in Stamford with Gregory Stapp as Emperor Altoum, Juan Luque Carmona as Calaf, and Patricia Craig in the title role.
King Lear
In 1985 a major screen adaptation of the play appeared: "Ran", directed by Akira Kurosawa. At the time the most expensive Japanese film ever made, it tells the story of Hidetora, a fictional 16th-century Japanese warlord, whose attempt to divide his kingdom among his three sons leads to an estrangement with the youngest, and ultimately most loyal, of them, and eventually to civil war. In contrast to the cold drab greys of Brook and Kozintsev, Kurosawa's film is full of vibrant colour: external scenes in yellows, blues and greens, interiors in browns and ambers, and Emi Wada's Oscar-winning colour-coded costumes for each family member's soldiers. Hidetora has a back-story: a violent and ruthless rise to power, and the film portrays contrasting victims: the virtuous characters Sue and Tsurumaru who are able to forgive, and the vengeful Kaede (Mieko Harada), Hidetora's daughter-in-law and the film's Lady Macbeth-like villain.
A scene in which a character is threatened with blinding in the manner of Gloucester forms the climax of the 1973 parody horror "Theatre of Blood". Comic use is made of Sir's inability to physically carry any actress cast as Cordelia opposite his Lear in the 1983 film of the stage play "The Dresser". John Boorman's 1990 "Where the Heart Is" features a father who disinherits his three spoilt children. Francis Ford Coppola deliberately incorporated elements of "Lear" in his 1990 sequel "The Godfather Part III", including Michael Corleone's attempt to retire from crime throwing his domain into anarchy, and most obviously the death of his daughter in his arms. Parallels have also been drawn between Andy García's character Vincent and both Edgar and Edmund, and between Talia Shire's character Connie and Kaede in "Ran".
King Priam
The first Covent Garden performance was on 5 June, conducted by John Pritchard. It was premiered in Germany at the Badisches Staatstheater in 1963, in Greece at the 1985 Athens Festival, in France at the Opéra de Nancy et de Lorraine in 1988, in Italy at Batignano in 1990, and in the United States San Francisco Opera Center Showcase in 1994. In 2014 the work was revived by English Touring Opera, with a reduced orchestration by Iain Farrington, the first performance of this version being given at the Linbury Studio Theatre at the Royal Opera House on 13 February 2014.
King Lear
Shakespeare wrote the role of Lear for his company's chief tragedian, Richard Burbage, for whom Shakespeare was writing incrementally older characters as their careers progressed. It has been speculated either that the role of the Fool was written for the company's clown Robert Armin, or that it was written for performance by one of the company's boys, doubling the role of Cordelia. Only one specific performance of the play during Shakespeare's lifetime is known: before the court of King James I at Whitehall on 26 December 1606. Its original performances would have been at The Globe, where there were no sets in the modern sense, and characters would have signified their roles visually with props and costumes: Lear's costume, for example, would have changed in the course of the play as his status diminished: commencing in crown and regalia; then as a huntsman; raging bareheaded in the storm scene; and finally crowned with flowers in parody of his original status.
Lear (play)
Lear is a 1971 three-act play by the British dramatist Edward Bond. It is an epic rewrite of William Shakespeare's "King Lear". The play was first produced at the Royal Court Theatre in 1971, featuring Harry Andrews in the title role. It was revived by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1982 with Bob Peck, and revived again at the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield, in 2005 with Ian McDiarmid.
Naum Theatre
The Naum Theatre was originally built as the "Bosco Theatre" by Italian illusionist Bartolomeo Bosco, on a land plot on İstiklal Avenue owned by the Naum family, as a wooden Ottoman style building. After Bartolomeo Bosco left the city, the ownership of the building passed to Michel Naum and Joseph Naum; who, upon completing the renovation works, reopened it with the name "Théatre de Péra" in 1844. The first play to be performed in the theatre was the opera play "Norma" by Vincenzo Bellini.
Cecilia Banu
Banu translated much of her husband, Abolqasem Lahouti's oeuvre into Russian. She also worked with him in the translation of Russian and European works into the Tajik language. "King Lear", which had been presented in Yiddish to great acclaim by Solomon Mikhoels and the Moscow State Jewish Theatre, was one translation; another was "Othello", which was presented in Tajik during the Decade of Tajik Art in Moscow in 1941.
King Lear
In 2017, the Guthrie Theatre produced a production of "King Lear" with Stephen Yoakam in the title role. Armin Shimerman appeared as the fool, portraying it with "an unusual grimness, but it works", in a production that was hailed as "a devastating piece of theater, and a production that does it justice."
List of productions at the Mark Taper Forum
King Lear by William Shakespeare; Directed by Kenneth Branagh (The American debut of The
Renaissance Theatre Company’s productions
Tanya Moiseiwitsch
She had to her credit no fewer than five Broadway productions: "Uncle Vanya" and "The Critic" in 1946, "The Matchmaker" in 1955–57, "The House of Atreus" in 1968, and "The Misanthrope" in 1975. In addition, she is credited for the 2004 revival of "King Lear", in which the scenery was based on her designs for Stratford (Ontario).
King Lear
Besides the subplot involving the Earl of Gloucester and his sons, the principal innovation Shakespeare made to this story was the death of Cordelia and Lear at the end; in the account by Geoffrey of Monmouth, Cordelia restores Lear to the throne, and succeeds him as ruler after his death. During the 17th century, Shakespeare's tragic ending was much criticised and alternative versions were written by Nahum Tate, in which the leading characters survived and Edgar and Cordelia were married (despite the fact that Cordelia was previously betrothed to the King of France). As Harold Bloom states: "Tate's version held the stage for almost 150 years, until Edmund Kean reinstated the play's tragic ending in 1823."
Greta Scacchi
In September 2013 Sir Jonathan Miller directed a gala performance of William Shakespeare's "King Lear" at The Old Vic in London. Scacchi played Regan.
Charles Laughton
Laughton returned to the London stage in May 1958 to direct and star in Jane Arden's "The Party" at the New Theatre which also had Elsa Lanchester and Albert Finney in the cast. He made his final appearances on stage as Nick Bottom in "A Midsummer Night's Dream", and as King Lear at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in 1959, although failing health resulted in both performances being disappointing, according to some British critics. His performance as King Lear was lambasted by critics, including Kenneth Tynan, who wrote that Laughton's Nick Bottom "... behaves in a manner that has nothing to do with acting, although it perfectly hits off the demeanor of a rapscallion uncle dressed up to entertain the children at a Christmas party". Although he did not appear in any later plays, Laughton toured the US with staged readings, including a successful appearance on the Stanford University campus in 1960.
David Firth (actor)
During his stage career, Firth was in the cast of "King Lear" (Old Vic, 1988), "The Hunting of the Snark" (1991), "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" (Barbican Theatre, 1992), "Jubilee" (Barbican Theatre, 1992), "Assassins" (Donmar 1992), "Knickerbocker Holiday" (Barbican, 1993), "Follies" (Brighton, 1993), "Forty Years On" (West Yorkshire Playhouse, 1994), "Love Life" (Barbican Theatre, 1995), "Passion" (Queens, 1996), "The Fix" (Donmar 1997), "Die Fledermaus" (Arts, 1998), "On A Clear Day" (Barbican Theatre, 1998), "Good Grief" (Yvonne Arnaud, 1998), "HMS Pinafore" (Royal Festival Hall, 1999), 'Susanna's Secret" (Drill Hall, 1999), "Jubilee" (Her Majesty's and BBC Radio 3, 1999), "Der Kuhandel" (Barbican and BBC Radio 3, 2000), "Journey's End" (Drill Hall, 2000), "Cenerentola" (Music Theatre London, 2001), "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (Lyric, 2001), "Relatively Speaking" (Secombe Theatre Sutton, 2002), "Our Song" (tour, 2003), "Coward and Others" (2004), "The Man Who..." (Orange Tree Richmond, 2005), "The Shell Seekers" (tour, 2006), "Yellow Lines" (Oval House, 2007), "Park Avenue" (Lilian Bayliss Theatre, 2008), "Dirty Dancing" (Aldwych Theatre, 2008), and "Phantom of the Opera" (Royal Albert Hall, 2011).
Nathaniel Butter
Nathaniel Butter (died 22 February 1664) was a London publisher of the early 17th century. The publisher of the first edition of Shakespeare's "King Lear" in 1608, he has also been regarded as one of the first publishers of a newspaper in English.
King Lear
In 2002 and 2010, the Hudson Shakespeare Company of New Jersey staged separate productions as part of their respective Shakespeare in the Parks seasons. The 2002 version was directed by Michael Collins and transposed the action to a West Indies, nautical setting. Actors were featured in outfits indicative of looks of various Caribbean islands. The 2010 production directed by Jon Ciccarelli was fashioned after the atmosphere of the film The Dark Knight with a palette of reds and blacks and set the action in an urban setting. Lear (Tom Cox) appeared as a head of multi-national conglomerate who divided up his fortune among his socialite daughter Goneril (Brenda Scott), his officious middle daughter Regan (Noelle Fair) and university daughter Cordelia (Emily Best).
Tim Pigott-Smith
In 2011 he took the title role in "King Lear" at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds.
Cordelia (King Lear)
Cordelia was always Lear’s favourite daughter. After Lear is rejected by Cordelia's wicked sisters, Goneril and Regan, he goes mad. Cordelia returns at the end of the play with the intentions of helping Lear, ultimately reversing her role as daughter to that of mother. But when she arrives, Lear is not able to recognize her because of his state of madness. Nevertheless, she forgives him for banishing her. By the time Lear finally regains his reason and realizes who Cordelia is, they have little time to talk and reconcile. Edmund arrives and sends them both to prison, where Cordelia is ultimately hanged. In Nahum Tate's "happy-ending" revision "The History of King Lear" (1681), which replaced Shakespeare's original version on stage for decades, Cordelia marries Edgar and becomes ruler of the kingdom.
Tim Crouch
Crouch also works as on occasional director. For the Royal Shakespeare Company, in Stratford, he has directed productions of "The Taming of the Shrew", in 2011, "King Lear" and his own play "I, Cinna (the Poet)", both in 2012. In February 2016, he directed Gary Owen's play for children, "Jeramee, Hartleby and Ooglemore", at the Unicorn Theatre, London.
King Lear
Charles Lamb established the Romantics' attitude to "King Lear" in his 1811 essay "On the Tragedies of Shakespeare, considered with reference to their fitness for stage representation" where he says that the play "is essentially impossible to be represented on the stage", preferring to experience it in the study. In the theatre, he argues, "to see Lear acted, to see an old man tottering about the stage with a walking-stick, turned out of doors by his daughters on a rainy night, has nothing in it but what is painful and disgusting" yet "while we read it, we see not Lear but we are Lear, – we are in his mind, we are sustained by a grandeur which baffles the malice of daughters and storms."
The History of King Lear
Nahum Tate's "The History of King Lear" was successfully remounted in New York, at The Shakespeare Center on Mahattan's Upper West Side, staged by the Riverside Shakespeare Company in 1985. For this production, conventions of the mid-17th century English theatre, when Tate's "Lear" was popular, were used in the staging, such as raked stage covered with green felt (as was the custom for tragedies), footlights used for illumination on an apron stage (or curved proscenium stage), and period costumes drawn from the era of David Garrick. Musical interludes were sung by cast members during the act breaks, accompanied by a harpsichord in the orchestra pit before the stage. The production was directed by the company's Artistic Director, W. Stuart McDowell, and featured Eric Hoffmann in the role of Lear, and supported by an Equity company of fifteen, including Frank Muller in the role of the Bastard Edmund. The play, with its "happy ending", became known as a ""King Lear" for optimists" by the press, and proved one of the most popular productions by the Riverside Shakespeare Company.
King Lear (1983 TV programme)
King Lear (1983) is a video production of William Shakespeare's 1606 play of the same name, directed by Michael Elliott. It was broadcast in 1983 in the UK and in 1984 in the US.
The History of King Lear
"The History of King Lear" was first performed in 1681, in the Duke's Theatre in London, with the leading roles taken by Thomas Betterton (as Lear) and Elizabeth Barry (as Cordelia), both remembered now for their portrayal of Shakespeare's characters. Tate relates that he was "Rackt with no small Fears" because of the boldness of his undertaking, until he "found it well receiv'd by [his] Audience"
Jonathan Hyde
In 2007, Hyde played Dr. Dorn in Chekhov's "The Seagull" and the Earl of Kent in "King Lear" for the Royal Shakespeare Company in a repertory company that included Ian McKellen, Frances Barber, Romola Garai, William Gaunt and Sylvester McCoy. Both plays toured together internationally, before taking up residence in the New London Theatre. The final performance was on 12 January 2008. He reprised his role of Kent in the 2008 television film of "King Lear".
King Lear
Other possible sources are the anonymous play "King Leir" (published in 1605); "The Mirror for Magistrates" (1574), by John Higgins; "The Malcontent" (1604), by John Marston; "The London Prodigal" (1605); Montaigne's "Essays", which were translated into English by John Florio in 1603; "An Historical Description of Iland of Britaine" (1577), by William Harrison; "Remaines Concerning Britaine" (1606), by William Camden; "Albion's England" (1589), by William Warner; and "A Declaration of egregious Popish Impostures" (1603), by Samuel Harsnett, which provided some of the language used by Edgar while he feigns madness. "King Lear" is also a literary variant of a common folk tale, Love Like Salt, Aarne–Thompson type 923, in which a father rejects his youngest daughter for a statement of her love that does not please him.
Mărgărita Miller-Verghy
Miller-Verghy still took interest in Eminescu translations, working with Adela Xenopol on a play that incorporated Eminescu's verse (1909). This was followed by a translation of William Shakespeare's "King Lear", used by the National Theater Bucharest. The National Theater also contracted her to translate "Macbeth" and "As You Like It", then Robert Browning's "Blot in the 'Scutcheon".
Richard Davey
Davey's long lasting interest in Shakespeare's "King Lear" saw production in November 2007 of an adaptation "The Madness of King Lear" in Hobart, Tasmania.
Nahum Tate
Tate wrote the libretto for Henry Purcell's opera "Dido and Aeneas"; its first known performance was in 1689. He also wrote the text for Purcell's Birthday Ode "Come Ye Sons of Art" in 1694. Tate also translated "Syphilis sive Morbus Gallicus", Girolamo Fracastoro's Latin pastoral poem on the subject of the disease of syphilis, into English heroic couplets.
Nathaniel Butter
"King Lear" was entered into the Stationers' Register on 26 November 1607, by Butter and colleague John Busby. The first quarto edition of the play was published the following year, printed by Nicholas Okes, with Butter listed as publisher. Busby appears to have dropped out of the enterprise prior to publication.
Mirian Shvelidze
"King Lear" (1987)
Herbert Lom
Lom starred as the King of Siam in the original London production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical, "The King and I." Opening at the Drury Lane Theatre on 8October 1953, it ran for 926 performances. Lom can be heard on the cast recording.
King Lear (1999 film)
King Lear is a 1999 adaptation of William Shakespeare's play of the same name. The film stars Brian Blessed (who also co-directed the film, along with Tony Rotherham) in the title role. Apart from Peter Brook's "King Lear" in 1971, it is the only other feature-length film adaptation to preserve Shakespeare's verse. Yvonne Griggs, in "Shakespeare's King Lear: A close study of the relationship between text and film" (2009), characterised it as "a very stilted costume drama".
Jasper Britton
Britton worked for six years as an assistant stage manager and sound operator until 1989 when, while working for Jonathan Miller at the Old Vic, he forced his way into Miller's office and refused to leave until Miller agreed to let him audition for "King Lear". His King of France to Eric Porter's Lear was the beginning of a prolific stage career. Early plays included "The Visit" with Theatre de Complicite at the Royal National Theatre, "The Cherry Orchard", "Macbeth" and "A Flea in her Ear" at Nottingham Playhouse. A season at the Royal Shakespeare Company included "A Jovial Crew" for Max Stafford-Clark, "Tamburlaine" for Terry Hands and "The Beggar's Opera" and "Antony and Cleopatra" for John Caird. There followed the Dauphin in "St Joan" at the Strand Theatre and an award winning performance as Rupert in "Rope" at Salisbury Playhouse.
John Nash (architect)
Nash was involved in the design of two of London's theatres, both in Haymarket. The King's Opera House (now rebuilt as Her Majesty's Theatre) (1816–1818) where he and George Repton remodelled the theatre, with arcades and shops around three sides of the building, the fourth being the still surviving Royal Opera Arcade.
Nawar Boulboul
In 2011, as a result of his playwrighting and directing work and because of his participation in protests against the Al-Assad government, Bulbul was forced to relocate to Jordan. In 2014 he began working with children in the Zaatari refugee camp in Mashraq, Jordan, where he directed approximately 100 young actors in an adaptation of Shakespeare's "King Lear". This work attracted the attention of the international press and the UNHCR. In an interview with the New York Times on March 31, 2014, Bulbul explained, "The show is to bring back laughter, joy and humanity."
Danny Lee Wynter
After receiving acclaim for his performance, Lee Wynter made his stage debut as the Fool to David Calder's "King Lear" in Dominic Dromgoole's 2008 production for Shakespeare's Globe. His other performances for the company include Henry IV Part I and II opposite Roger Allam and Jamie Parker, filmed for Shakespeare's Globe on Screen, and as a company player Lee Wynter has created roles in new plays, The Frontline by Che Walker, and Bedlam by Nell Leyshon, the first play by a living female writer to be staged at Shakespeare's Globe.
William Macready
Transferring his services to Drury Lane, he gradually rose in public favour, his most conspicuous success being in the title role of Sheridan Knowles's "William Tell" (11 May 1825). In 1826 he completed a successful engagement in the United States, and in 1828 his performances met with a very flattering reception in Paris. In 1829 he appeared as Othello in Warwick. On 15 December 1830 he appeared at Drury Lane as Werner, one of his most powerful impersonations. In 1833 he played in "Antony and Cleopatra", in Byron's "Sardanapalus", and in "King Lear". He was responsible, in 1834, and more fully in 1838, for returning the text of "King Lear" to Shakespeare's text (although in a shortened version), after it had been replaced for more than a hundred and fifty years by Nahum Tate's happy-ending adaptation, "The History of King Lear".
King Lear
The first professional performances of "King Lear" in North America are likely to have been those of the Hallam Company (later the American Company) which arrived in Virginia in 1752 and who counted the play among their repertoire by the time of their departure for Jamaica in 1774.
Nahum Tate
Tate published a volume of poems in London in 1677, and became a regular writer for the stage. "Brutus of Alba, or The Enchanted Lovers" (1678), a tragedy dealing with Dido and Aeneas, was dedicated to Charles Sackville, 6th Earl of Dorset; it was later adapted as the libretto for Henry Purcell's opera "Dido and Aeneas" (1688 or earlier). "The Loyal General", with a prologue by Dryden, played at the Dorset Garden Theatre in 1680.
King Lear
All theatres were closed down by the Puritan government on 6 September 1642. Upon the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, two patent companies (the King's Company and the Duke's Company) were established, and the existing theatrical repertoire divided between them. And from the restoration until the mid-19th century the performance history of "King Lear" is not the story of Shakespeare's version, but instead of "The History of King Lear", a popular adaptation by Nahum Tate. Its most significant deviations from Shakespeare were to omit the Fool entirely, to introduce a happy ending in which Lear and Cordelia survive, and to develop a love story between Cordelia and Edgar (two characters who never interact in Shakespeare) which ends with their marriage. Like most Restoration adapters of Shakespeare, Tate admired Shakespeare's natural genius but saw fit to augment his work with contemporary standards of art (which were largely guided by the neoclassical unities of time, place, and action). Tate's struggle to strike a balance between raw nature and refined art is apparent in his description of the tragedy: "a heap of jewels, unstrung and unpolish't; yet so dazzling in their disorder, that I soon perceiv'd I had seiz'd a treasure." Other changes included giving Cordelia a "confidante" named Arante, bringing the play closer to contemporary notions of poetic justice, and adding titilating material such as amorous encounters between Edmund and both Regan and Goneril, a scene in which Edgar rescues Cordelia from Edmund's attempted kidnap and rape, and a scene in which Cordelia wears men's pants that would reveal the actress's ankles. The play ends with a celebration of "the King's blest Restauration", an obvious reference to Charles II.
Thomas Lowe (tenor)
Lowe sang as a child: in May 1732 he sang in Handel's oratorio "Esther" at the King's Theatre. His career as a tenor is first known in August 1740, when he took part in the masque "Alfred" by Thomas Arne, at its first performance at Cliveden, country home of Frederick, Prince of Wales. He first appeared at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in London in September 1740, as Sir John Loverule in "The Devil to Pay" by Charles Coffey. During his first two seasons there he played Macheath in "The Beggar's Opera", Bacchanal in Arne's "Comus" and Arne's songs in the incidental music for several productions.
King Roger
Both the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona and the Opéra National de Paris in Paris, conducted by Kazushi Ono presented it in 2009. In 2011, "King Roger" appeared at the Staatstheater Mainz. A new production of the opera was staged in Polish at The Santa Fe Opera on 21 July 2012 with Mariusz Kwiecień in the title role. In 2013, "King Roger" was presented at the 17th Festival Amazonas de Ópera in Manaus, Brazil, with in the title role. In June 2014, a new production was staged at the Wuppertal Opera House in Germany. Two performances took place in Boston in March 2015 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Charles Dutoit. The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, introduced a new co-production with Opera Australia, conducted by Antonio Pappano, in May 2015. The first performance in Australia was shown by Opera Australia in 2017 in Sydney and Melbourne, conducted by Andrea Molino, with Saimir Pirgu as Shepherd.
Trisdee na Patalung
In July 2011, na Patalung conducted the second revival performance of Sucharitkul's opera "Mae Naak" based on the Thai ghost story of the same name at the Sala Chalermkrung Royal Theatre in Bangkok. He also conducted the London premiere of this work at the Bloomsbury Theatre, London, in September 2011.
Maxim Mazumdar
Mazumdar united once again with director Jordan Deitcher for two shows in New York City, playing King Lear in Raven’s 1984 production at the Park Royal Theatre, and writing and appearing in the 1985 Off-Broadway world premiere of The Bentley Variations (aka Unholy Trinity), a cabaret about the role and treatment of the visionary in society, based on the works of Eric Bentley.
King Lear (1953 film)
King Lear is a 1953 live television adaptation of the Shakespeare play staged by Peter Brook and starring Orson Welles. Preserved on kinescope, it aired October 18, 1953, as part of the CBS television series "Omnibus", hosted by Alistair Cooke. The cast includes Micheál Mac Liammóir and Alan Badel.
Tantoo Cardinal
In 2012, she performed the role of Regan in an all-aboriginal production of William Shakespeare's "King Lear" at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, alongside a cast that also included August Schellenberg as Lear, Billy Merasty as Gloucester, Jani Lauzon in a dual role as Cordelia and the Fool, and Craig Lauzon as Kent.
The King and I
The production opened on May 3, 2000 at the London Palladium, directed by Renshaw and choreographed by Lubovitch, and using the Kirk and Thomson designs. It reportedly took in £8 million in advance ticket sales. The cast included Elaine Paige as Anna and Jason Scott Lee as the King, with Sean Ghazi as Luan Tha and Ho Yi as the Kralahome. Lady Thiang was, again, played by Taewon Yi Kim, of whom "The Observer" wrote, "Her 'Something Wonderful' was just that." The show was nominated for an Olivier Award for outstanding musical. Later in the run, Lee was replaced as the King by Paul Nakauchi. The revival was generally well received. "The Daily Mirror" said: ""The King and I" waltzed back to the West End in triumph last night." The "Daily Express" noted, "Love it or loathe it, "The King and I" is an unstoppable smash." "Variety", however, noted a lack of chemistry between the leads, commenting that "there’s something not entirely right in Siam when the greatest applause is reserved for Lady Thiang". Replacements included Josie Lawrence as Anna, Keo Woolford as the King and Saeed Jaffrey as the Kralahome. The show closed on January 5, 2002.
Tamerlano
"Tamerlano" was first performed at the King's Theatre, London, on 31 October 1724, around the time of the annual performance of Nicholas Rowe's play of "Tamerlane" (4–5 November). There were 12 performances and it was repeated on 13 November 1731. The opera then received a production in Hamburg with the recitative in German and the arias in Italian. The first modern production was in Karlsruhe on 7 September 1924. Amongst recent productions, it appeared in the repertory of the Washington National Opera in 2008 and of the Los Angeles Opera in November 2009; both productions featured tenor Plácido Domingo who also appeared as Bajazet in a production at Teatro Real, Madrid, in 2008.
The History of King Lear
who, after sufferings and tortures such as [Lear's], would wish to see his life prolonged? What! replace a sceptre in that shaking hand?—a crown upon that old grey head, on which the tempest had poured in its wrath, on which the deep dread-bolted thunders and the winged lightnings had spent their fury? O never, never!
Jameson was equally appalled by the introduction of a romance between Cordelia and Edgar, which had not been part of the old legend. While acknowledging that prior to Shakespeare's writing of "King Lear", some versions of the story had ended happily, and that Tate's returning of the crown to Lear was therefore not a complete innovation, Jameson complained that on stage:
they have converted the seraph-like Cordelia into a puling love heroine, and sent her off victorious at the end of the play—exit with drums and colours flying—to be married to Edgar. Now anything more absurd, more discordant with all our previous impressions, and with the characters as unfolded to us, can hardly be imagined.
The Shakespearean critic A.C. Bradley was more ambivalent. Though agreeing that we are right to "turn with disgust from Tate's sentimental adaptations, from his marriage of Edgar and Cordelia, and from that cheap moral which every one of Shakespeare's tragedies contradicts, 'that Truth and Virtue shall at last succeed'", yet he "venture[d] to doubt" that "Tate and Dr. Johnson [were] altogether in the wrong". Sharing Johnson's view that the tragic ending was too harsh, too shocking, Bradley observed that "King Lear", while frequently described as Shakespeare's greatest work, the best of his plays, was yet less popular than "Hamlet", "Macbeth", and "Othello"; that the general reader, though acknowledging its greatness, would also speak of it with a certain distaste; and that it was the least often presented on stage, as well as being the least successful there. Bradley suggested that the feeling which prompted Tate's alteration and which allowed it to replace Shakespeare on stage for over a century was a general wish that Lear and Cordelia might escape their doom. Distinguishing between the philanthropic sense, which also wishes "other" tragic figures to be saved, and the dramatic sense, which does not, but which still wishes to spare Lear and Cordelia, he suggested that the emotions have already been sufficiently stirred "before" their deaths, and he believed that Shakespeare would have given Lear "peace and happiness by Cordelia's fireside", had he taken the subject in hand a few years later, at the time that he was writing "Cymbeline" and "The Winter's Tale". Agreeing with Lamb that the agony that Lear has undergone makes "a fair dismissal from the stage of life the only decorous thing for him", Bradley argues that "it is precisely this "fair" dismissal which we desire for him", not the renewed anguish which Shakespeare inflicts on him with the death of Cordelia.
The Yiddish King Lear
The Yiddish King Lear ( "Der Yidisher Konig Lir", also known as The Jewish King Lear) was an 1892 play by Jacob Gordin, and is generally seen as ushering in the first great era of Yiddish theater in the Yiddish Theater District, in which serious drama gained prominence over operetta.
Thomas Betterton
In appearance he was athletic, slightly above middle height, with a tendency to stoutness; his voice was strong rather than melodious, but in recitation it was used with the greatest dexterity. Pepys, Pope, Steele, and Cibber all bestow lavish praise on his acting. His repertory included a large number of Shakespearian roles, many of them presented in the versions adapted by Davenant, Dryden, Shadwell and Nahum Tate. Even though those adapted versions did not receive critical acclaim, they did not harm or shadow Betterton's acting either. Still, his performances were largely praised. He played Lear opposite Elizabeth Barry's Cordelia in Tate's modified version of Shakespeare's "King Lear". Betterton was himself author of several adaptations which were popular in their day.
Nahum Tate
In 1985, the Riverside Shakespeare Company of New York City staged Tate's "History of King Lear" in its original form, "happy ending" and all, directed by W. Stuart McDowell at The Shakespeare Center. This included removing the Fool altogether, adding a confidante for Cordelia, named Arante, as well as an "abduction" scene of Cordelia on the heath. The play concluded with multiple happy endings: for Lear and Kent, and Cordelia and Edgar, who presumably wed after the play's conclusion. Musical interludes were sung by cast members during the act breaks, accompanied by a harpsichord in the orchestra pit.
King Lear
Like other Shakespearean tragedies, "King Lear" has proved amenable to conversion into other theatrical traditions. In 1989, David McRuvie and Iyyamkode Sreedharan adapted the play then translated it to Malayalam, for performance in Kerala in the Kathakali tradition – which itself developed around 1600, contemporary with Shakespeare's writing. The show later went on tour, and in 2000 played at Shakespeare's Globe, completing, according to Anthony Dawson, "a kind of symbolic circle". Perhaps even more radical was Ong Keng Sen's 1997 adaptation of "King Lear", which featured six actors each performing in a separate Asian acting tradition and in their own separate languages. A pivotal moment occurred when the Jingju performer playing Older Daughter (a conflation of Goneril and Regan) stabbed the Noh-performed Lear whose "falling pine" deadfall, straight face-forward into the stage, astonished the audience, in what Yong Li Lan describes as a "triumph through the moving power of "noh" performance at the very moment of his character's defeat".
Talawa Theatre Company
In late June 2016, Talawa Theatre Company announced the film of King Lear, in a collaboration with the Royal Exchange Theatre and funded by the digital commissioning body The Space. The film was available to view on-demand and free of charge on BBC iPlayer and the British Council's websites for three months in summer 2016, ahead of a cinema release in September and October 2016, and closed 2016 by being screened on BBC4 on Christmas Day.
Thomas Bowdler
The Bowdlers were not the first to undertake such a project. Bowdler's commitment to not augmenting or adding to Shakespeare's text, instead only removing sensitive material, was in contrast with the practice of earlier editors. Nahum Tate as Poet Laureate had rewritten the tragedy of "King Lear" with a happy ending; In 1807, Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb published "Tales from Shakespeare" for children with synopses of 20 of the plays, but seldom quoted the original text. Though "The Family Shakespeare" was considered a negative example of censorship by the literary establishment and its commitment to the "authentic" Shakespeare, the Bowdlers' expurgated editions made it more acceptable to teach Shakespeare to wider and younger audiences. As said by the poet Algernon Charles Swinburne, "More nauseous and more foolish cant was never chattered than that which would deride the memory or depreciate the merits of Bowdler. No man ever did better service to Shakespeare than the man who made it possible to put him into the hands of intelligent and imaginative children".
Alix Wilton Regan
After graduating at the age of 20, her first stage appearance was as Hannah in the two-handed "Retreat" by playwright James Saunders, which won a FringeReview Award for Most Outstanding Theatre Show at The Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2007 and transferred to the New End Theatre, London. Since then, Regan has performed in theatrical productions at Theatre Royal Haymarket, The Tricycle Theatre, The King's Head Theatre, The Arcola Theatre and The Landor Theatre. She performed opposite Jonathan Pryce in "King Lear" at The Almeida Theatre in Michael Attenborough's last show as Artistic Director there.
Stas Namin
Namin is both stage director and producer at the theater he created in 1999, whose first productions were the legendary American musical "Hair" and the rock opera "Jesus Christ Superstar", both in continuous performance for eighteen years. One of his theater's latest productions, a reconstruction of the 1913 avant-garde opera Victory Over the Sun, played in 2015 at three major international venues – the leading contemporary art expo Art Basel, the Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art and the annual FIAC art fair in Paris — receiving high praise from critics and art historians.
Tony Robinson
In September 2013, Sir Jonathan Miller directed the Gala Performance of William Shakespeare's "King Lear" at the Old Vic in London. Robinson played the Fool.
Sebastian Doggart
After leaving Cambridge, Doggart trained as a drama director at Central School of Speech and Drama. His production of "Ms Lear"—which radically re-interpreted King Lear as a neo-Thatcherite woman—performed at theatres in London and Amsterdam. On graduating, he directed productions for eminent British companies Cheek by Jowl (world tour of "The Duchess of Malfi"); Actors Touring Company ("Ion" by Euripides); Theatre Museum Covent Garden ("Playing with Fire" by August Strindberg) and Creation Theatre Company ("Romeo and Juliet", which Doggart set in 18th century Ireland, with English Capulets and Irish Montagues).
David Bradley (English actor)
Bradley joined the Royal Shakespeare Company and performed at Laurence Olivier's National Theatre Company in the early 1970s. He first appeared on television in 1971, as a police officer in the successful comedy "Nearest and Dearest". He was awarded a Laurence Olivier Award in 1991 for his supporting role as the Fool in "King Lear" at the Royal National Theatre. He appeared in the Royal National Theatre's 1997 production of "The Homecoming", as well as productions of "The Caretaker" at Sheffield Theatres and the Tricycle Theatre from 2006 to 2007.
Jos Vantyler
In September 2013, Sir Jonathan Miller directed the Gala Performance of William Shakespeare's "King Lear" at The Old Vic in London. Vantyler played Oswald opposite, Joss Ackland as King Lear, Michael York, Tony Robinson, Greta Scacchi, Honeysuckle Weeks, John Nettles, Robert Young, Tony Britton, Shaun Dooley, Barrie Rutter and Felicity Dean.
King Lear
The play was again adapted to the world of gangsters in Don Boyd's 2001 "My Kingdom", a version which differs from all others in commencing with the Lear character, Sandeman, played by Richard Harris, in a loving relationship with his wife. But her violent death marks the start of an increasingly bleak and violent chain of events (influenced by co-writer Nick Davies' documentary book "Dark Heart") which in spite of the director's denial that the film had "serious parallels" to Shakespeare's play, actually mirror aspects of its plot closely. Unlike Shakespeare's Lear, but like Hidetora and Sandeman, the central character of Uli Edel's 2002 American TV adaptation "King of Texas", John Lear played by Patrick Stewart, has a back-story centred on his violent rise to power as the richest landowner (metaphorically a "king") in General Sam Houston's independent Texas in the early 1840s. Daniel Rosenthal comments that the film was able, by reason of having been commissioned by the cable channel TNT, to include a bleaker and more violent ending than would have been possible on the national networks. 2003's Channel 4-commissioned two-parter "Second Generation" set the story in the world of Asian manufacturing and music in England.
King Lear
The first film of "King Lear" was a five-minute German version made around 1905, which has not survived. The oldest extant version is a ten-minute studio-based version from 1909 by Vitagraph, which, according to Luke McKernan, made the "ill-advised" decision to attempt to cram in as much of the plot as possible. Two silent versions, both titled "Re Lear", were made in Italy in 1910. Of these, the version by director Gerolamo Lo Savio was filmed on location, and it dropped the Edgar sub-plot and used frequent intertitling to make the plot easier to follow than its Vitagraph predecessor. A contemporary setting was used for Louis Feuillade's 1911 French adaptation "Le Roi Lear Au Village", and in 1914 in America, Ernest Warde expanded the story to an hour, including spectacles such as a final battle scene.
Felicity Dean
In September 2013 Sir Jonathan Miller directed the Gala Performance of William Shakespeare's King Lear at The Old Vic in London. Dean played Goneril opposite, Joss Ackland as King Lear, Michael York, Tony Robinson, Greta Scacchi, Honeysuckle Weeks, John Nettles, Robert Young, Tony Britton, Shaun Dooley, Barrie Rutter and Jos Vantyler.
The King and I
In 1950, British actress Gertrude Lawrence's business manager and attorney, Fanny Holtzmann, was looking for a new vehicle for her client when the 1944 Margaret Landon novel "Anna and the King of Siam" (a fictionalized version of Leonowens' experiences) was sent to her by Landon's agent. According to Rodgers biographer Meryle Secrest, Holtzmann was worried that Lawrence's career was fading. The 51-year-old actress had appeared only in plays, not in musicals, since "Lady in the Dark" closed in 1943. Holtzmann agreed that a musical based on "Anna and the King of Siam" would be ideal for her client, who purchased the rights to adapt the novel for the stage.
Nalaga'at
The first production of the theater, "Light is Heard in Zig-Zag", directed by Adina Tal, was performing in Israel and worldwide with great success. The second production, "Not By Bread Alone", directed by Adina Tal and featuring an ensemble of 11 deaf-blind actors, is performing in Nalaga'at Theater since its opening. The show was also invited to perform in major theater festival in Perth (Australia), New York, Boston, Washington DC, the LIFT festival in London and the international music and theater festival in Seoul, South Korea.