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King Lear

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An aged and autocratic king calls his three daughters together to offer the extent of their love in exchange for proportionate shares of his kingdom.  While the elder daughters comply and are rewarded, Cordelia, the youngest and favorite of the king, is banished for her stubborn regusal to play her father’s foolish game.  Realizing Cordelia’s constancy too late, Lear suffers painful indignities at the hands of his elder daughters and is left homeless and betrayed.  In a subplot, Gloucester’s bastard son, Edmund, seeks revenge on his father and his legitimately born brother, Edgar.

Credits

Creative team

By

William Shakespeare

Directed by

Adrian Hall

Set design by

Eugene Lee

Costume design by

Catherine Zuber

Costume design by

Catherine Zuber

Catherine Zuber has created the costumes for Richard II, The Doctor's Dilemma, and over forty other A.R.T. productions including Three Farces and a Funeral, Antigone, Loot, The Idiots Karamazov, Ivanov, Phaedra, The Merchant of Venice, Valparaiso, The Imaginary Invalid, The Taming of the Shrew, Peter Pan and Wendy, The Bacchae, Man and Superman, The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, Woyzeck, The Wild Duck, The Naked Eye, Long Day's Journey Into Night, Tartuffe, Ubu Rock, Waiting for Godot, The Oresteia, Shlemiel the First, Picasso at the Lapin Agile, A Touch of the Poet, What the Butler Saw, The Cherry Orchard, and Orphée. Ms. Zuber's credits include work at Lincoln Center, The Joseph Papp Public Theater, Goodman Theatre, The Guthrie Theater, Mark Taper Forum, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Hartford Stage Company, La Jolla Playhouse, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Houston Grand Opera, and Glimmerglass Opera, among others. Her Broadway credits include The Triumph of Love (Connecticut Critics Circle Award and Drama Desk nomination), Ivanov (Drama Desk nomination), The Sound of Music, Twelfth Night, The Red Shoes, London Assurance, The Rose Tattoo, and Philadelphia Here I Come. Ms. Zuber was the recipient of the 1997 Obie Award for sustained achievement in design. She is the costume designer for La Fête des Vignerons de 1999, the massive Festival of the Winegrowers in Vevey, Switzerland.

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Lighting design by

Natasha Katz

Music composed by

Richard Cumming

Fight choreography by

William Finlay

Cast

Lear

F. Murray Abraham

Lear

F. Murray Abraham

Kent

Jeremy Geidt

A.R.T. Senior Actor, founding member of the Yale Repertory Theatre and the A.R.T. Yale: more than 40 productions (including The Seagull). A.R.T.: 100 productions including The Seagull (three turns as Sorin), Julius Caesar, Three Sisters, The Onion Cellar, Major Barbara (Undershaft), Heartbreak House (Shotover), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Quince four times, Snug once), Henry IV (Falstaff), Twelfth Night (Toby Belch), The Caretaker (Davies), The Homecoming (Max), Loot (Truscott), Man and Superman (Mendoza/Devil), Waiting for Godot (Vladimir), The Threepenny Opera (Peacham/Petey), Ivanov (Lebedev), Three Sisters (Chebutkin), Buried Child (Dodge), The Cherry Orchard (Gaev) and The King Stag (Pantelone). Teaches at Harvard College, Harvard’s Summer and Extension Schools and at the A.R.T/MXAT Institute. Trained at the Old Vic Theatre School and subsequently taught there. Acted at the Old Vic, Young Vic, The Royal Court, in the West End, in films and television and has been hosting his own show “The Caravan” for the BBC for five years. Came to the U.S. with the satirical revue The Establishment and acted on and off Broadway, at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival and at the Lincoln Center Festival. Lectured on Shakespeare in India and the Netherlands Theatre School. Received the Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Boston Actor and the Jason Robards Award for Dedication to the Theatre.

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Gloucester

Alvin Epstein

Gloucester

Alvin Epstein

Alvin Epstein is a former artistic director of the Guthrie Theater and associate director of Robert Brustein's Yale Repertory Theatre. He has directed over twenty productions (five at the American Repertory Theater, including the inaugural A Midsummer Night's Dream in 1980) and performed in over one hundred (over fifty at the A.R.T.). His A.R.T. roles include Old Man in Lysistrata, the Herald in Marat/Sade, Dionisio Genoni in Enrico IV, John of Gaunt/First Gardener in Richard II, Erich Honecker in Full Circle, McLeavy in Loot, Shabelsky in Ivanov, and Lee Strasberg in Nobody Dies on Friday; Mr. Epstein has also appeared in The Doctor's Dilemma, Antigone, Three Farces and a Funeral, The Winter's Tale, Charlie in the House of Rue, The Merchant of Venice, In the Jungle of Cities, The Bacchae, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, When the World Was Green (A Chef's Fable), Slaughter City, Tartuffe, The Tempest, Beckett Trio, The Threepenny Opera, and Waiting for Godot, among many others. His twenty Broadway and off-Broadway productions include his debut with Marcel Marceau, the Fool in Orson Welles's King Lear, Lucky in the American premiere of Waiting for Godot, Clov in the American premiere of Endgame, Peachum in The Threepenny Opera (co-starring with Sting), and the world premiere of Sam Shepard and Joseph Chaikin's When the World Was Green (A Chef's Fable). For twenty years he and Martha Schlamme performed A Kurt Weill Cabaret on tour in the U.S. and South America and a year's run on Broadway. He has performed at many resident theaters throughout the U.S., in films and on television. Awards include Most Promising Actor ('56 Variety Poll), Brandeis Creative Arts Award ('66), Obie for Dynamite Tonight! ('68), Elliot Norton Award for Sustained Excellence ('96), and the IRNE Award for Best Supporting Actor as Shabelsky in Ivanov ('99). Mr. Epstein teaches acting at the American Repertory Theater/Moscow Art Theater Institute for Advanced Theater Training at Harvard University.

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Goneril

Candy Buckley

Goneril

Candy Buckley

Regan

Christine Estabrook

Regan

Christine Estabrook

Cordelia

Stephanie Roth-Haberle

A.R.T.: Oedipus (Jocasta), Lysistrata (Lampito), Marat/Sade (Charlotte Corday), Enrico IV (Matilde), Hamlet (Ophelia), Alice in Bed (Alice), Silence Cunning Exile (Suzie), King Lear (Cordelia), When We Dead Awaken (Maya), Servant of Two Masters (Beatrice), Misalliance (Hypatia), The Seagull (Nina), and Hedda Gabler (Thea). Resident credits include A Winter's Tale and Twelfth Night (California Shakespeare Festival), Swimming in March (Market Theater of Cambridge), Macbeth (Hartford Stage), Betrayal (Yale Repertory Theatre). Abroad: Two Gentlemen of Verona (Shakespeare's Globe in London). Broadway: Artist Descending a Staircase (Drama Desk nominee for Featured Actress), and Les Liaisons Dangereuses (with the Royal Shakespeare Company). Off-Broadway: Cymbeline (Delacorte Theatre), Two Gentlemen of Verona (Theatre for a New Audience), The Cherry Orchard (directed by Peter Brook); works at Circle Repertory Theatre and Second Stage Theatre. Film and television credits: Songcatcher (2000 Sundance Ensemble Acting jury award); The Cradle Will Rock, Deconstructing Harry, Philadelphia; Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors, Hollywood Ending, and the upcoming Melinda and Melinda; and Law & Order.

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Albany

David Margulies

Albany

David Margulies

Cornwall

Mario Arrambbide

Cornwall

Mario Arrambbide

France

Matthew Sheehan

France

Matthew Sheehan

Burgundy

Jon David Weigland

Burgundy

Jon David Weigland

Fool

Thomas Derrah

A.R.T.: 119 productions, including R. Buckminster Fuller: THE HISTORY (and Myster) OF THE UNIVERSE (R. Buckminster Fuller), Cabaret (Fraulein Schneider), Endgame (Clov), The Seagull (Dorn), Oliver Twist (also at Theatre for a New Audience and Berkeley Repertory Theatre), The Birthday Party (Stanley), Highway Ulysses (Ulysses), Uncle Vanya (Vanya), Marat/Sade (Marquis de Sade), Richard II (Richard). Broadway: Jackie: An American Life (23 roles). Off-Broadway: Johan Padan (Johan), Big Time (Ted).  Tours with the Company across the U.S., with residencies in New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles, and throughout Europe, Canada, Israel, Taiwan, Japan and Moscow, and has recently been performing Julius Caesar in France. Other: I Am My Own Wife, Boston TheatreWorks; Approaching Moomtaj, New Repertory Theatre; Twelfth Night and The Tempest, Commonwealth Shakespeare Co.; London’s Battersea Arts Center; five productions at Houston’s Alley Theatre, including Our Town (Dr. Gibbs, directed by José Quintero); and many theatres throughout the U.S. Awards: 1994 Elliot Norton Prize for Sustained Excellence, 2000 and 2004 IRNE Awards for Best Actor, 1997 Los Angeles DramaLogue Award (for title role of Shlemiel the First). Television: Julie Taymor’s film Fool’s Fire (PBS American Playhouse), "Unsolved Mysteries," "Del and Alex" (Alex, A&E Network). Film: Mystic River (directed by Clint Eastwood), The Pink Panther II. He is on the faculty of the A.R.T. Institute, teaches acting at Harvard University and Emerson College, and is a graduate of the Yale School of Drama.

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Edgar

Steven Skybell

Edgar

Steven Skybell

Edmund

Jonathan Fried

Edmund

Jonathan Fried

Oswald

Christopher Lloyd

Oswald

Christopher Lloyd

Servant

Jay Corcoran

Servant

Jay Corcoran

Doctor

Wesley Clark

Doctor

Wesley Clark