Performing King Lear

King Lear is arguably the most complex and demanding play in the whole of Shakespeare. Once thought impossible to stage, today it is performed with increasing frequency, both in Britain and America. It has been staged more often in the last fifty years than in the previous 350 years of its performance history, its bleak message clearly chiming in with the growing harshness, cruelty and violence of the modern world. Performing King Lear offers a very different and practical perspective from most studies of the play, as it is centred firmly on the reality of creation and performance, as seen through the eyes of a wide selection of today's leading actors and directors, including Nicholas Hytner, Adrian Noble, Michael Gambon, David Hare, Kenneth Brannagh, Deborah Warner, Derek Jacobi, Ian McKellen, Jonathan Miller, Dominic Dromgoole and Simon Russell Beale. The book is book based on Jonathan Croall's unique interviews with over twelve of the most distinguished actors to have undertaken this daunting task during the last forty years, and a similar number of leading directors who have staged the play in London, Stratford and elsewhere. Croall also draws on interviews with a handful of actors who have played other key roles such as the Fool or Edmund. Each discusses in detail how they have dealt with the formidable challenges involved in interpreting and staging Shakespeare's great tragedy.