Charles Kingsman

Charles Kingsman is the New Burbage Festival's grand old man, the company's living link to its founding glories, now cast as King Lear in what may be his last great performance. Courtly, exacting, and quietly afraid of his own fading memory and strength, he carries himself with the authority of a man who has spent a lifetime inside Shakespeare's language.

William Hutt, himself one of Canada's most celebrated Shakespearean actors near the end of his own career, brings an almost unbearable authenticity to a role about an aging actor facing Lear's mortality. The performance never asks for pity—it simply lets you watch a great craftsman measure what's left of his instrument, which is more moving than any speech about it could be.