John Lithgow will play King Lear in New York's Central Park this summer. The Tony award-winner, who is best known for the long-running sitcom 3rd Rock from the Sun, has big boots to fill in the role. No actor has tackled Shakespeare's aged monarch at the Delacorte theatre for more than 40 years. In 1973, James Earl Jones gave a performance that looms large on account of its being filmed. Two years later, Lithgow himself performed at the Delacorte theatre, playing Laertes in Hamlet, but he has not returned since.
In 2012, Lithgow starred in the National Theatre production of Arthur Wing Pinero's farce The Magistrate, and in 2007 he performed in Twelfth Night, for the Royal Shakespeare Company. Michael Billington wrote of his Malvolio: "Even his walk implies he disdains the ground he treads on."
Alongside King Lear, which will be directed by Daniel Sullivan and runs from 22 July to 17 August, this year's season will include Much Ado About Nothing starring Tony nominee Lily Rabe – Portia to Al Pacino's Shylock in 2010 – and Hamish Linklater.
Shakespeare in the Park – or the New York Shakespeare festival, as it was previously known – was conceived in 1954 by Joseph Papp, the founding director of New York's Public theatre, which continues to produce the season. The cornerstone of the annual festival, which has hosted Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman in the past, is that tickets are free and distributed democratically.
