Before it was commonplace, Kathryn Hunter was into gender swapping. In 1997, she played Shakespeare’s King Lear — the first British woman to do so professionally.
She’s also played Richard III, as well as innumerable female roles including Cleopatra, and even assayed the part of a monkey.
Diminutive with long sinewy limbs and an extraordinarily expressive countenance and raspy voice, she’s been described admiringly as a “shape shifter.” For her current gig at the Shakespeare Theatre Company,