Glenda Jackson is a Fearsome Lear!

Often considered the best actress alive - on the West End and Broadway - Glenda Jackson is a gender-bending Lear in William Shakespeare’s “King Lear” at the Cort Theatre on Broadway. 

Directed by Sam Gold, it is an awe-inspiring production with Elizabeth Marvel as Goneril, Aisling O’Sullivan as Regan, Pedro Pascal (lately from “Narcos” and ‘Game of Thrones”) as Edmund; Ruth Wilson (“The Affair,” “Luther”) as Cordelia and the Fool; and Jane Houdyshell (in another gender-bending role) as the Earl of Gloucester. 

Jackson is allowed to be herself (there’s no male impersonation) and the lines have not been modified to alter Lear’s masculinity.  

She towers over everyone - not physically but by sheer force of her personality.  She is fiery, ferocious, and implacable!  Barely have you had time to register her presence than this Lear is weighing her daughters’ love and dividing up the kingdom.

That Voice!

At 83, the famous voice still induces shock!  Jackson is pale, gaunt, short-haired, androgynous.  But her voice remains as intense as ever in all its peppery raspiness suggesting unyielding wrath!  She bares her teeth, the veins in her neck pulse, her hands shake!  Scorn is a strong note. The curses are delivered savagely! The steps to madness are unerringly marked, no line is wasted!  

Jackson can be playful with the verse, “while we unburdened crawl toward death” she drags out each word with comic, even geriatric, emphasis!  She exaggerates her stoop for laughs. “Doth Lear walk thus? Speak thus? Where are his eyes?” she demands while doing an exaggerated saunter.  Her eyes narrow with fury becoming more distracted and vacant while madness, subtly insinuated, takes hold.

In the storm scene, wearing long stockings and an over-shirt, her exposed legs have knotted veins, her face is a mask, her gaze bleak.  Her mental disintegration is complete.  When she cries, "Let me not be mad," she clutches her head in agony.  Her short-lived reunion with Cordelia is heartbreaking.  The last moments, as she cradles the dead Cordelia, and suddenly goes limp herself, are incredibly moving. 

From the Stage to Politics!

A member of the Royal Shakespeare Company in the 1960s, Jackson gave critically acclaimed performances in “Marat/Sade” (as Charlotte Corday) and “Hamlet” (as Ophelia).  She won two Oscars for “Women in Love” (1971) and “A Touch of Class” (1974). She also picked up two Emmys as Elizabeth I in “Elizabeth R.”

In 1992, she put her acting career aside for politics, winning a Labour seat in the House of Commons from Hampstead and Highgate in North London. She served 23 years (five terms) famously roasting Prime Minister Tony Blair for joining the United States in the war against Iraq and then attacking Margaret Thatcher’s legacy just days after Thatcher’s death in 2013.

Between “Lear” in London’s Old Vic (2016) and “Lear” in New York (2019), Jackson did a Broadway revival last year of Edward Albee’s “Three Tall Women,” for which she won the Tony.

An Octogenarian Playing an Octogenarian!

The play clocks in at nearly three and a half hours!  Add to that seven (perhaps eight) performances a week for the next five months, and it is hard not to be in awe of Jackson’s sheer discipline and stamina to learn the nearly 1,000 lines and take on this most difficult of Shakespearean roles - at the mature age of 83!  

Most of all, Jackson gives us a genuine, palpable sense of the vulnerability of old age. She reminds us of the man Lear once was while her aging body is constantly reminding us of what he has become. This Lear is unwilling to grow old gracefully, yet is about to be undone by decisions marked by sheer senility!

When Regan talks of "the infirmity of his age" and Goneril reminds her sister to "let his disposition have that scope that dotage gives it," the lines suddenly make more sense than ever.  Folly, politics, bad parenting, and insanity combine to plunge the kingdom into chaos!  In that sense, this is definitely a production for the times: one of the biggest laughs comes when Jackson, not long out of the UK’s Parliament, speaks of "scurvy" politicians!

At London’s Old Vic, when an eighth performance per week was added, Jackson said that the energy of the play and the audience’s enthusiasm carried her along.  I expect that Broadway audiences will be similarly delighted to experience this unforgettable and searing performance!  

Ludi Joseph

New York

March 14, 2019