Originating at England’s innovative Chichester Festival Theatre, director Goold’s exciting interpretation relocates the bloody action to a nameless 20th century nether world. Tony-nominated Kate Fleetwood also returns to reprise her stage role performance as Lady Macbeth.

Shot in High Definition on UK locations, Goold will maintain the atmosphere and tone of the critically acclaimed stage production, heightening the Shakespearean classic with an edgy style reminiscent of Illuminations’ recent film adaptation of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Hamlet, which will be broadcast on PBS in April 2010 by THIRTEEN’s Great Performances.

For Great Performances, Bill O’Donnell is series producer; David Horn is executive producer. For Illuminations, John Wyver and Sebastian Grant are producers.

The monumental tragedy of an old king who decides to divide his kingdom among his daughters, but imposes a love test on each to merit her portion. His youngest daughter, Cordelia, refuses to flatter him falsely, sending Lear into a rage. He withdraws her portion, exiles his best friend, and generally becomes increasingly irrational. Cordelia leaves to marry the King of France. His eldest daughters subsequently turn on him, finally tossing him out into a stormy night. In a parallel plot, Lear’s close friend Gloucester succumbs to the plot of Edmund, his bastard son, who wants the rights of a legitimate son. As this plot develops, Gloucester’s legitimate son Edgar must flee and disguise himself, as Edmund becomes sexually embroiled with Lear’s two daughters, and with them the politics of the kingdom. As Lear rails against man and nature during a violent storm on the heath, Gloucester becomes involved in an invasion from France. Betrayed by Edmund, he loses both his eyes. In this wretched state he attempts suicide, but is spared by Edgar. He then meets Lear in a reunion of madness and blindness – “reason in madness” as Edgar describes it. Next Lear reunites with Cordelia in a moment of sublime forgiveness. But the war is lost. Edmund has Cordelia hung while in prison. One daughter poisons the other, then commits suicide. Edgar kills Edmund in a duel, but not in time to save Cordelia. Lear finally dies over her dead body in grief. As one of those still alive at the end observes, “our present business is general woe.”

Cast
King Lear – Ian McKellen
Goneril – Frances Barber
Regan – Monica Dolan
Cordelia – Romola Garai
Albany – Julian Harries
Cornwall – Guy Williams
Gloucester – William Gaunt
Edgar – Ben Meyjes
Edmund – Philip Winchester
Kent – Jonathon Hyde
Fool – Sylvester McCoy

The PBS film version of this play may be purchased now at www.shoppbs.org. Put ‘King Lear’ in the search bar.

King Lear is a masterpiece of literary fiction.  Ian McKellen and Trevor Nunn have rendered the play in a masterful fashion.  PBS has broadcast the play, and now makes it available here, at Great Performances Online.  A masterpiece done in masterful fashion should not be missed.

However, King Lear is long, complicated, and quite strange.  It has also been interpreted more broadly and in more diverse ways than any other Shakespeare play.  As all great art that can be endlessly appreciated, King Lear can be explored and experienced in many ways, but not all at once.  Much as one must view a great cathedral from a particular vantage point, one can only appreciate King Lear from some perspective or point of view—one or many.  This Lear section of the Great Performances site provides a great deal of information about King Lear, and offers a variety of points of view. We cordially invite you to watch the film at Great Performances Online.  We also invite you to explore the many ways in which the play can be appreciated, and contribute your own thoughts.  King Lear may be fiction, but it offers one the richest ways we have for thinking about life.

McKellen’s riveting film may also be purchased at www.shoppbs.org.  Put King Lear in the search bar.

“It is we who paint the leaves.”

As a work of the dramatic arts, King Lear places unusual demands upon us. A temple, a painting, even a poem or a novel, have some sense of permanence, a thing itself to be seen or read. A play is more like a symphony, marks on a page that must be brought to life by someone other than the author. We can read King Lear of course; indeed, to understand the play it must be read. But the written play presumes a state of incompleteness. The complete work demands a director, actors, a place to perform it, and an audience. It is the ultimate experience of art as collaboration.

Before movies, King Lear in this complete state was ironically transient, gone when the curtain closed. But we now have eleven movie versions of King Lear.  Next year we will receive a movie version with Al Pacino as Lear.  (A planned movie with Anthony Hopkins and a star-studded cast has been either canceled or indefinitely delayed.)  They are all worthwhile, but they are each different from the others, sometimes dramatically so. Despite the sense of permanence that the reproduction of movies gives us, King Lear on film still requires collaboration with the one thing that all art involves in the end—us.

This web site offers the following sections to allow us to appreciate and engage with the play.

Interview with Ian McKellen. Ian McKellen talks about his sense of filming King Lear.

Watch the Play. The full film in small screen format.

The Play in Summary and Full Text. Brief synopsis.  Introduction through film clips.  Full scene-by-scene synopsis with commentary.  Full text of Shakespeare’s King Lear divided into scenes or scene segments with companion clip from McKellen film for each segment, including indication of text cuts for PBS version of the McKellen film.

Films and Print Editions.  Introduction to the McKellen film. Biographies of Ian McKellen and Trevor Nunn.  Reviews of McKellen film.  Ten more films of King Lear with casts and reviews.  Six film adaptations of the Lear story.  All in-print editions of King Lear with reviews and recommendations. All in-print collected works of Shakespeare with reviews and recommendations.

Background on Shakespeare.  Shakespeare biography.  Did Shakespeare write his plays?  English stage history.  Shakespeare’s England.

Background on King Lear.  Sources Shakespeare plundered for King Lear.  The problem of two different texts for the play.  The bizarre stage history of King Lear.

Engaging with the Play.  What this might mean.  Ways of seeing the play, from diverse perspectives.  Themes the play naturally, or unnaturally, provokes—the play’s questions.  Ways King Lear might be connected to other plays of Shakespeare, other literature, or other things in the world at large.

Education. At present, a compilation of lesson ideas around King Lear from high school teachers, supplied through the Folger Shakespeare Library.

Breakthru Films

Sergei Prokofiev’s fanciful musical tale “Peter and the Wolf” is given new life in this innovative new animated interpretation, which won the 2008 Oscar® for Best Animated Short Film. “Oldies will remember the work from school music lessons,” wrote London’s OBSERVER, “while those coming to the story for the first time will be delighted with this darkly comic modernization.” Originally composed in 1936, the piece famously uses personified instruments in the orchestra to tell the story — also penned by the composer — of young Peter and his animal friends the Duck, the Bird, and even a mischievous Cat (represented by an oboe, flute, and clarinet respectively). Peter, himself represented by the string section, becomes an unsuspecting hero and outwits the Wolf (French horns), who’s intent on menacing his small Russian village — not to mention Peter’s beloved animal friends. Conceived and directed by award-winning animator Suzie Templeton, this modern-day “Peter & the Wolf” uses stop-frame model animation, puppets, and digital photography to retell the enduring classic story, and features the Philharmonia Orchestra under the direction of Mark Stephenson performing Prokofiev’s beloved score.

Mark Stephenson also helmed the Philharmonia Orchestra for the film’s live world premiere at London’s Royal Albert Hall in September 2006. The Philharmonia was founded in 1945, primarily as a recording orchestra. It is the world’s most recorded orchestra with more than 1,000 releases and is comprised of more than 80 musicians giving concerts in London and at its residencies and other venues around the U.K., in addition to touring all over the world.

Sergei Prokofiev completed “Peter and the Wolf” after resettling in Moscow from Paris in 1936. By the autumn of the previous year, he had composed a dozen pieces for children, which according to his diary, were “published in a volume entitled ‘Music for Children,’ Op. 65.” Although the official debut of “Peter and the Wolf” on May 2 at Moscow Children’s Musical Theater was not a resounding success, the piece has subsequently delighted audiences of all ages and become his best-known work, performed by almost every ensemble, and used as an instructional tool to help children learn about the different instruments of the orchestra. Discover more about how Prokofiev’s composition was created and its story in the essay by contributor Tim Smith. The winner of numerous international awards, including a Best Animation BAFTA Award for her 2001 short film DOG, director Suzie Templeton reveals more about adapting Prokofiev’s story and creating this animated version in Dialogue. Watch an excerpt from the film, which was made at Poland’s award-winning Se-ma-for animation studio and took five years to complete.

Special funding for “PETER & THE WOLF” is provided by the LuEsther T. Mertz Charitable Trust.