Shameless star to play King Lear in Manchester theatre return

Actor David Threlfall, best known for playing the feckless Frank Gallagher in Channel 4's Shameless, is to tackle one of Shakespeare's greatest roles, King Lear, when he returns to the stage in his home city of Manchester next year.

Threlfall, 71, will take on the Bard's troubled monarch for the 50th anniversary of the Royal Exchange theatre in 2026.

He was a regular at the venue in the 1980s and 90s, playing roles including Macbeth, but reportedly fell out with an artistic director over plans to appear in Uncle Vanya for its 25th anniversary.

The Royal Exchange's 50th anniversary season will open with Johnny Vegas, Lucy Beaumont and Shobna Gulati starring in Jim Cartwright's 1986 play Road.

That show will see another former Royal Exchange regular, Sir Tom Courtenay, 88, also return for his 17th role - albeit in a pre-recorded segment on screen.

Threlfall was once one of the venue's leading men and its associate artistic director, but hasn't performed there since 1999.

He went on to star in Shameless from 2004 to 2013 as well as TV's What Remains, Code of a Killer and Nightsleeper.

On stage, he won an Olivier Award in the West End in 1980 and has two Tony nominations on Broadway. He has appeared in King Lear before, as Edgar opposite Sir Laurence Olivier in a TV version in 1983 - filmed in Granada TV's Manchester studio.

His return to the city in the title role will be seen in September and October 2026.

The Royal Exchange's anniversary season will also include the premiere of Even These Things by Rory Mullarkey, set during three periods in Manchester's history, including one of the most dramatic days in the city's and the theatre's history, when it was damaged by an IRA bomb in 1996.

There will also be a premiere for the winner of this year's Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting, Shooters by Tolu Okanlawon, about real-life African-American photojournalist Gordon Parks; plus a production of Tony-winning musical Fun Home; and revivals of Noel Coward's Private Lives and Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music.

Artistic director Selina Cartmell said the season would "renew our commitment to being a world-class theatre here in the heart of Manchester and an artistic engine-room for talent development in the North".

The Royal Exchange receives the highest Arts Council England funding of any theatre after the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company, and is hoping to recapture former glories after a troubled few years.

It was hit hard by the pandemic and was at the centre of a censorship row last year when a production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream was cancelled, leading to the resignation of the theatre's chief executive.