07/19/2026
Congratulations for a wonderful NYT review of the inaugural King Lear in your new home… “McCallum’s “King Lear” provides one of those perspective shifts in a wordless opening sequence, during which the widower king loses his queen, a woman that Shakespeare’s text never mentions. As Rhoads first strides into the stage space from outside, a robed female figure stays behind at the edge of the greensward, gazing at the dreaming river. Right at the end of the show, we think back on this image as a kind of solace. Lear endures terrible trials, and he loses everything, including his life. Still, McCallum’s staging suggests, he will at least then join his queen. That initial sequence showed us what death looks like. And if we’ve learned anything at all while watching this gorgeous show, it’s that a soul could happily look out at that valley forever.”