Sir Ian McKellen is set to return to the London stage for his first major theatrical role since his fall in 2024. The actor will appear in Lear, a reimagining of Shakespeare's King Lear, at The Yard Theatre in Hackney Wick this winter.
McKellen's last major stage performance was in Player Kings at the Noel Coward Theatre in June 2024, when he lost his footing, breaking his wrist and chipping a vertebra. Following the incident, he stated he would take time off but had no plans to retire.
The Yard Theatre, which opened in 2011 in a warehouse using reclaimed materials from the Olympic Park, has been rebuilt on the same site. The new venue, designed by Takero Shimazaki Architects, features a curved auditorium with reused brick from the original building.
The Yard's first season in its new building also includes the London premiere of an adaptation of Jackie Collins' 1968 novel The World Is Full Of Married Men, a revival of Ntozake Shange's For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When The Rainbow Is Enuf, an adaptation of Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway, and There's Something About Adam Black, a debut play by Sex Education writer Troy Hunter.
Founder and artistic director Jay Miller said: 'In 2011 I opened The Yard as a DIY theatre that was supposed to be here for six months. On The Yard's 15th anniversary, I'll open it again. Same spirit, this time in a better, bigger theatre.'
