Video: Lord Larry's Crowning Triumph

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King Lear at the Museum of Broadcasting in New York City

Laurence Olivier stood in the wings of Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall waiting to receive the acclaim of 2,500 New Yorkers who had gathered two weeks ago to celebrate his 53 years of achievement in the movies. Olivier is a frail 75 now, and his body has played grudging host to enough illnesses to wipe out the entire Royal Shakespeare Company. So backstagers looked on with pain but not surprise as he momentarily lost his balance and slumped against the doorway. Then the crowd rose, and with it the applause. Olivier took his cue and went out onstage. Suddenly he was the dashing Lord Larry, energized by the spotlight, alive to the theatrical moment, mesmerizing one more audience. Like Tinker Bell, he heard the clapping and came to life again.

Taking a curtain call is one thing; tackling Shakespeare's fieriest monarch is another. So for Olivier to test himself against King Lear—as he did last fall for Britain's Granada Television, in a program showing exclusively in the U.S. through mid-June at the Museum of Broadcasting in Manhattan—is less a professional challenge than an act of reckless physical courage. This recklessness has become something of a habit with Olivier. A sense of danger, athletic as well as emotive, has often been at the heart of his Shakespearean performances. His Romeo (1935) clambered up to his fair lady's balcony in record time; his Hamlet (1947) leaped from a 14-ft. balcony to wrestle with Laertes; his Coriolanus (1959) executed a horrendous, death-daring fall. Inside this theatrical peer, the spirit of a Douglas Fairbanks was always bounding to get out.

Lear, at "four score and upward," requires no such exploits, but in this production he must ride a horse, swing heavy swords, be bucketed with 900 gal. of water, go shirtless, eviscerate and eat a rabbit. With the grip of mortality shortening every Olivier breath, each gesture can seem heroic, each line he utters a precious gift from the depleting stock of his time. But there are reasons beyond enlightened sentimentality to treasure this Lear. To support him Olivier has assembled an actors' aristocracy: Diana Rigg and Dorothy Tutin as Lear's treacherous daughters Regan and Goneril, Colin Blakely as the faithful Kent, John Hurt as Lear's Fool, Leo McKern as old Gloucester, David Threlfall (Smike in the R.S.C.'s Nicholas Nickleby) as Gloucester's loving son Edgar. Olivier has pruned the text significantly but fairly, tightening the action like a noose of family ties around the two patriarchs' necks. Most important, through cunning, craft and sheer force of will, Olivier has scaled the greatness of this role.