Ian McKellen is to play King Lear in his first major theatrical role since falling from the stage into the first row of the audience in 2024.<\/p>\n
The accident, which left him with \u201cagonising pains<\/a>\u201d, happened during a performance of Player Kings<\/a> in the West End and led McKellen to withdraw from the production. He will now return as Shakespeare\u2019s Lear \u2013 a character he played to great acclaim in 2007 and 2017 \u2013 in the opening season of the redeveloped Yard theatre<\/a> in east London, known for its DIY spirit and adventurous experimental work with emerging artists.<\/p>\n It is a huge coup for the Yard, which has always punched above its weight since it was set up as a temporary theatre in a disused warehouse in Hackney Wick in 2011. Last month, it won an Olivier award<\/a> for The Glass Menagerie, the swansong production in its original home before it was razed and rebuilt. The theatre\u2019s new curved auditorium, on the same site, doubles the size of the audience but McKellen\u2019s Lear will be an especially hot ticket as this remains an intimate venue \u2013 it has just 220 seats. The Yard\u2019s founder and artistic director Jay Miller will stage Lear, a \u201creimagining\u201d developed over the last year with playwright Simon Stephens, and said it would be \u201ca beautiful show about what it means to be a king but also about loss, memory and what it is to give a life to the theatre which is what Ian has done\u201d.<\/p>\n The new Yard theatre in Hackney Wick, London, has been designed by Takero Shimazaki Architects. Illustration: Takero Shimazaki Architects<\/p>\n Miller described McKellen, who will turn 87 this month, as \u201cone of the most inspiring people I\u2019ve ever met\u201d. He added: \u201cHis ideas for theatre are extraordinary. At the age of 86 he\u2019s restlessly still trying to figure out what it can do. His knowledge of Shakespeare and what it means to people is really important to me \u2013 he doesn\u2019t try to intellectualise it, it doesn\u2019t become an academic exercise.\u201d Instead, said Miller, the actor asks: \u201cHow can we make it really land so people will have an evening that they\u2019ll never forget?\u201d<\/p>\n McKellen played Edgar opposite Robert Eddison\u2019s Lear in 1974 and Kent opposite Brian Cox\u2019s Lear in 1990. He first took on the main role in a 2007 production<\/a> for the Royal Shakespeare Company that transferred to the West End, toured the world and was filmed for television. Ten years later<\/a> he was Lear once more, in a Chichester version that also went into the West End.<\/p>\n Miller said that Shakespeare\u2019s characters have \u201cbecome mythic figures for our culture\u201d and that actors of McKellen\u2019s \u201ccalibre and genius\u201d realise that they\u2019ll \u201cnever finish the job \u2026 Acting is something that you\u2019ll never perfect, you just keep on trying to find new things about who we are.\u201d<\/p>\n Ian McKellen as King Lear in the Royal Shakespeare Company\u2019s 2007 production. Photograph: Tristram Kenton\/The Guardian<\/p>\n On Friday, McKellen\u2019s new film The Christophers<\/a> \u2013 in which he plays a painter \u2013 will be released in cinemas. (It co-stars Michaela Coel whose play Chewing Gum Dreams was an early success for the Yard and launched Coel\u2019s career.) Next year McKellen will be seen again in another of his best known roles, Gandalf, in The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum<\/a>. He has not been entirely absent from the stage since the Player Kings accident. In January he gave a rehearsed reading of Equinox<\/a>, a new monologue by Laurie Slade, at Pitlochry Festival theatre in Scotland and also appeared that month \u2013 this time in video form \u2013 in the experimental, mixed-reality play An Ark<\/a>, put on at the Shed in New York. That play was also written by Simon Stephens.<\/p>\n To be staged this winter, Lear is one of six productions in the Yard\u2019s new season. There will be a 50th anniversary production in September of Ntozake Shange\u2019s \u201cchoreo-poem\u201d for colored girls who have considered suicide \/ when the rainbow is enuf, directed by Diane Page with music composed by Jammz. Miller called it \u201cone of those plays that should be in our theatrical canon but isn\u2019t\u201d and said that Shange, who died in 2018, \u201cshould be up there with the Sarah Kanes, the Caryl Churchills\u201d.<\/p>\n Over summer, the Yard is hosting the London premiere of Malm\u00f6 Stadsteater\u2019s puppet production The World Is Full of Married Men, which brings to life the 1968 debut novel<\/a> of Jackie Collins<\/a> using \u201cadapted Barbie dolls\u201d. It has been, says Miller, \u201ca smash hit in Stockholm\u201d and is \u201csexy, irreverent and funny\u201d, adding that Collins \u201cwas way ahead of her time in terms of the feminism she was standing by\u201d. Translated from Swedish by Lulu Raczka, it unfolds against a landscape of the 60s media industry in London \u201cthat doesn\u2019t feel that far away\u201d.<\/p>\n Philosophy of the World by the company In Bed With My Brother at the Edinburgh fringe in 2025. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Virginia Woolf\u2019s Mrs Dalloway has been adapted by Holly Robinson for a production to be directed next year by Anna Himali Howard. Miller said it would ask \u201cbig questions about the choices we make in our lives and whether we\u2019re in control of them or not\u201d. Opening in January, the new play There\u2019s Something About Adam Black \u2013 written by Troy Hunter and directed by Tatenda Shamiso \u2013 is a \u201chilarious\u201d romcom about two Black gay men. \u201cWe\u2019ve been working with Troy for five years \u2013 I think he\u2019s going to be a star,\u201d said Miller.<\/p>\n The season also includes the previously announced Philosophy of the World, a show by the company In Bed With My Brother that tells the story of cult rockers the Shaggs, once dubbed \u201cthe best worst band of all time\u201d. A hit at last summer\u2019s Edinburgh fringe<\/a>, it was originally developed at the Yard in 2024. \u201cWe\u2019re a key engine room for art and culture in London and beyond,\u201d said Miller. \u201cWe\u2019re still really excited about what the potential of theatre can be.\u201d Tickets for every production start at \u00a310.<\/p>\n