Shakespeare’s King Lear is the theatrical equivalent of an Olympic decathlon.

Lear may be the most challenging role in the English-speaking theater, one that takes prickly concepts of vanity, loss and madness and pushes them about as far as they can go.

“Of all the roles I’ve done, this is the most demanding,” said Theodore Swetz, who will play the mad king in the Kansas City Actors Theatre production starting Friday, Oct. 13, in Spencer Theatre as a co-production with UMKC Theatre. Swetz is the Patricia McIlrath endowed professor of theater at UMKC. Read more…