King Lear, past and present – in pictures
Shakespeare’s tragic monarch remains one of the most demanding roles in theatre. As Timothy West returns to the role at Bristol Old Vic, revisit the key portrayals on stage and screen, from Olivier and Scofield to Jonathan Pryce and Geoffrey Rush
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Timothy West’s King Lear is one of the highlights in Bristol Old Vic’s 250th anniversary year.
Photograph: Simon Annand
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West first played Lear, aged 37, for the Prospect Theatre Company. He tackled the role again three decades later at the Old Vic in 2003
Photograph: Tristram Kenton
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Laurence Olivier played King Lear in a 1946 West End production. The Times praised his ‘creative stamina’ and hailed the production as ‘Unfaultering! Unflagging!’
Photograph: Kurt Hutton/Getty Images/Hulton Archive
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Olivier returned to the role almost 40 years later in a film for Channel 4, starring John Hurt as the Fool
Photograph: Everett Collection/Rex Features
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John Gielgud first played Lear in 1931 and then directed himself as Lear in the 1950s. Like Olivier, he also returned to the role late in life – lending his voice to a radio production at the age of 90
Photograph: Time and Life Pictures/Getty Images
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From Akira Kurosawa to Jean-Luc Godard, film directors around the world have been drawn to the tragedy of King Lear. One of the finest screen adaptations is this Russian version from 1970, starring Juri Jarvet as Lear and translated by Boris Pasternak
Photograph: Ronald Grant Archive
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Upon seeing Paul Scofield’s Lear in the 60s, Kenneth Tynan declared: ‘You will never see such another.’ Scofield played the part in an international tour, and his performance was captured on film. Scofield, too, played the role on radio a few years before his death
Photograph: Ronald Grant Archive
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Brian Cox played Lear at the National in 1990, opposite David Bradley (above left) as the Fool and Ian McKellen as Kent
Photograph: Tristram Kenton
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Nigel Hawthorne was 70 when he played Lear at the Barbican in 1999. The RSC production was mounted by Japanese director Yukio Ninagawa
Photograph: Tristram Kenton
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Tom Courtenay as Lear at the Royal Exchange in Manchester in 1999. Nineteen years earlier, Courtenay had starred in The Dresser, a play about a touring production of Lear, in which he was the assistant to a leading man played by Albert Finney
Photograph: Tristram Kenton
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Director Declan Donnellan’s 2002 RSC Lear had a startlingly young actor as Lear – Nonso Anozie was only 23 years old and it was his first role after leaving drama school
Photograph: Tristram Kenton
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Warren Mitchell, better known as Alf Garnett, played Lear in Australia in the 1978 and reprised the part at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in 1995. The production, directed by Jude Kelly, transferred to the Hackney Empire
Photograph: Tristram Kenton
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Kay Curram as Cordelia, David Warner as Lear and Michael Thomas as Kent in King Lear at Chichester in 2005. Warner said he followed Donald Wolfit’s advice for Lears: ‘Get yourself a light Cordelia and keep your eye on the Fool’
Photograph: Tristram Kenton
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Corin Redgrave’s King Lear, seen here with David Hargreaves’s Gloucester at the Albery in 2005. For Michael Billington, Redgrave’s Lear entered ‘as a prankish military despot’ and gradually awakened ‘to the counterfeit hollowness of rule’
Photograph: Tristram Kenton
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Ian McKellen gave one of the most high-profile performances as Lear in recent years. The RSC production transferred to London, toured the world and was filmed. The screen version preserved McKellen’s modesty; his stripping off in the storm scene on stage almost had as much attention as Daniel Radcliffe’s appearance in Equus
Photograph: Tristram Kenton
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David Calder was Lear and Jodie McNee was Cordelia in a 2008 production at the Globe, directed by Dominic Dromgoole. It was told with ‘minimal fuss’ and even reminiscent of The Wizard of Oz for Lyn Gardner
Photograph: Tristram Kenton
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Pete Postlethwaite’s Lear was the showpiece of Liverpool’s year as the European capital of culture in 2008. It was staged at the Everyman, where Postlethwaite began his career as an actor. Rupert Goold’s production received lukewarm reviews and was tweaked before transferring to London’s Young Vic
Photograph: Tristram Kenton
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Derek Jacobi in Michael Grandage’s 2010 production at The Donmar Warehouse
Photograph: Johan Persson
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Greg Hicks as Lear in The Royal Shakespeare Company’s 2011 Roundhouse production
Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian
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Tim Pigott-Smith in the West Yorkshire Playhouse. production, 2011
Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian
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Wu Hsing-kuo plays Lear in the Chinese Peking Opera’s production at the Edinburgh International Festival 2011
Photograph: Liu Yang
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Jonathan Pryce as Lear and Phoebe Fox as Cordelia in Michael Attenborough’s production at the Almeida Theatre, 2012
Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian
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John Shrapnel (right) as Lear and Trevor Cooper as Gloucester in the 2012 production at The Tobacco Factory
Photograph: Graham Burke
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David Hayman as Lear and Owen Whitelaw as the Fool in the Citizens theatre 2012 production
Photograph: Tim Morozzo
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David Haig as Lear in the 2013 Theatre Royal Bath production
Photograph: Nobby Clark
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Frank Langella as Lear in the Chichester Festival Theatre production, 2013
Photograph: Johan Persson
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Simon Russell Beale in The National Theatre’s 2014 production. Michael Billington considered it exceptional: ‘It combines a cosmic scale with an intimate sense of detail and is neither imprisoned by an intellectual concept nor by an actor’s temperament.’
Photograph: Mark Douet
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Don Warrington as Lear at the Royal Exchange in Manchester in 2016. ‘The nicest thing about any job is being offered it,’ he told the Guardian after being cast. ‘Then the reality begins to dawn … I can feel my blood pressure rising.’
Photograph: Jonathan Keenan
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Geoffrey Rush in Sydney Theatre Company’s 2015 production. ‘It’s so nihilistic,’ said Rush, ‘a world completely, irredeemably out of balance’.
Photograph: Heidrun Löhr/Sydney Theatre Company
