Ian McDiarmid Leads King Lear at Sheffield Crucible — SkimNews
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- Ian McDiarmid, age 82, stars as Lear in Titus Halder's Sheffield Crucible staging, delivering what the review calls a 'titanic, heartbreaking wonder' that combines bodily authenticity with verbal clarity across the play's full emotional range
- The production, designed by Richard Kent as a 'dark pit' evoking a nuclear after-blast, exploits the 30 uses of 'nothing' in the play — four of them in the opening scene's first four lines — to project terminal uncertainty
- McDiarmid's Lear reads as a transactional demagogue — giggling at talk of his daughters having 'issue,' weaponizing undefined 'terrors,' and chillingly dismissing Cordelia as 'Her price has fallen' — while still admitting fault and reaching forgiveness
- Max Revell plays the Fool as a gymnastic dancer with breaking and popping roots, backflipping through the storm winds and twisting his body into a crab shape to illustrate the jester's central metaphor
- Dramaturg Sophie Duncan's elision of variant texts centers Edmund, played by Fode Simbo with a manipulative charisma the review likens to Iago in Othello, while Bebe Sanders plays a 'dignified, wounded' Cordelia and Mark Holgate is cast as a 'site-specific Yorkshire Kent'
- The review argues the casting sidesteps the usual risk of an age-appropriate Lear — transporting the dead daughter is 'cleverly' worked around — and frames the role as topping a career that already includes Emperor Palpatine in the Star Wars franchise
Why it matters: McDiarmid at 82 fulfills the textual paradox the review identifies in Lear — extreme physical frailty coexisting with the strength to carry Cordelia's corpse and the vocal depth for the dense poetry — sidestepping the usual casting of middle-aged actors. For older performers, the review treats the production as evidence that the role's age requirement can be met without physical compromise; for theatergoers, it positions the staging as a rare classical peak from an actor better known for Star Wars' Emperor Palpatine.
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