David Threlfall will return to Manchester to play the title role in King Lear as part of the Royal Exchange theatre’s 50th anniversary season in 2026, the venue announced. The performances are scheduled for September and October next year and mark the actor’s first appearance at the Exchange since 1999.
Threlfall, 71, best known for his television role as Frank Gallagher in Channel 4’s Shameless (2004–2013), was once a leading man and associate artistic director at the Royal Exchange. He appeared in seven productions at the theatre during the 1980s and 1990s, including Macbeth, and has an extensive stage and screen résumé that includes an Olivier Award in 1980 and two Tony nominations. He previously appeared in King Lear as Edgar opposite Sir Laurence Olivier in a 1983 television production filmed at Granada TV’s Manchester studio.
The announcement forms part of a wider season the Royal Exchange is billing as a renewal of its ambitions after a difficult period. The season will open with Jim Cartwright’s 1986 play Road, starring Johnny Vegas, Lucy Beaumont and Shobna Gulati. Sir Tom Courtenay, 88, a frequent collaborator with the theatre, will also return in a pre-recorded on-screen segment for that production.
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.
The anniversary programme includes new and revived works. Rory Mullarkey’s Even These Things will receive its premiere and is set across three periods in Manchester’s history, including the 1996 day when the city and the theatre were damaged by an IRA bomb. The season will also stage Shooters by Tolu Okanlawon, the winning play of this year’s Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting, which explores the life of African-American photographer Gordon Parks. Musical Fun Home will be produced alongside revivals of Noel Coward’s Private Lives and Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music.
The Royal Exchange’s announcement arrives as the theatre seeks to rebuild public confidence and artistic momentum following a turbulent few years. Like many performing arts organisations, it was hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. Last year the theatre was at the centre of a controversy when a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream was cancelled, a decision that prompted the resignation of the organisation’s chief executive.
Threlfall’s return to the Royal Exchange reunites him with the city where much of his early stage career developed. Since his last appearances at the venue, he has continued to work across television, film and theatre, with credits including the BBC dramas What Remains, Code of a Killer and the recent miniseries Nightsleeper.
The Royal Exchange was founded as a producing theatre in 1976, presenting plays in a theatre module within the historic Cotton Exchange building. The 50th anniversary season aims to combine new commissions, prize-winning new writing and revivals that reflect both the theatre’s history and Manchester’s cultural life. The company said ticketing and production details for the season will be released in the coming months.
