It wouldn’t take a genius to conclude that 87-year-old Sir Ian McKellen was done with the stage. After an incredibly prolific start to his eighties, he fell off the Noël Coward Theatre stage during a performance of Robert Icke’s 2024 Henry IV mash-up Player Kings and seemed thereafter to be focussing on screen work. Well, as it happens you’ll be able to catch him in Avengers: Doomsday this winter… right about the same time he returns to the stage to lend his star power to the reopening season of the Yard Theatre in Hackney Wick.
Not just for a show or two either. Lear is a new adaptation of King Lear, but also – it seems – McKellen’s life and thoughts, by playwright Simon Stephens, Yard boss Jay Miller, with contributions (naturally) from McKellen himself.
What is all this going to look like? Hard to say exactly but it’s probably going to be very cool indeed and sell out more or less instantly and it’ll star Ian McKellen – you’d be not in your perfect mind to miss out.
It was announced late in the day that the show would co-star US actor Taylor Russell as Cordelia – presumably the only other role in the play unless they’re really leaving a casting announcement late.
A final release of tickets will happen on November 5, though if you’re serious consider getting a Yard membership for the pre-sales happening November 3 and 4.
