King Lear at Globe 15 Oct - broadcast around the world on BBC World Service at Christmas time

King Lear at Globe 15 Oct - broadcast around the world on BBC World Service at Christmas time

King Lear will be performed in a special one-off show at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre on Sunday 15 October 2006. The performance will be later broadcast to 43 million listeners around the world on BBC World Service at Christmas time - the largest audience to ever simultaneously hear a Shakespeare play.

Philip Madoc plays King Lear ; Mali Harries will play Lear's strong-willed daughter Cordelia, alongside Fiona Shaw as Goneril and Deborah Findlay as Regan. Andrew Sachs, most famous for his role as Basil Fawlty's hapless waiter, Manuel, in Fawlty Towers, will play the fool and Philip Jackson also joins the company playing the Earl of Kent.

The play tells the story of an old retiring king whose stubborn actions set in motion a bloody civil war which rips his country apart. As betrayals, personal revenges and familial deceits pile up, Lear becomes increasingly abandoned and isolated - left a pathetic man pushed to the edge of sanity and lamenting the death of his beloved, and devoted, daughter Cordelia.

Tickets from Shakespeare's Globe Box Office on 020 7401 9919 at the usual prices of £5-£31.