King Lear

Nationally-renowned director Amanda Dehnert, who thrilled Oregon Shakespeare Festival audiences with radically inventive productions of My Fair Lady in 2013 and Into the Woods last year, will close our season with the much-anticipated King Lear, in which an aging ruler selfishly divides up his kingdom and, in the process, tears his family, and his country, apart. Joining the ranks of legendary Lears like Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, Anthony Hopkins, and Ian McKellen, will be the remarkable Obie Award-winning and Tony Award-nominated Anthony Heald—fresh off his stint in The Elephant Man on Broadway—in his Cal Shakes debut. Often called “the Everest” of tragedies because of the scale of emotions to which it soars and descends, King Lear speaks directly today to a society afraid of the complications, conflicts, and needs that come with aging, while reminding audiences of the resiliency of love.