A star-studded audience, a cheering ovation, a totally soldout run and a rave review from the New York Times.

Those are the ingredients that made up last night's opening performance of the Stratford Festival production of King Lear at the Vivian Beaumont Theater of Lincoln Center.

Christopher Plummer's return in the first Shakespearean role he has played on Broadway since 1988 made this one of the most eagerly awaited shows of the current New York season.

The crowd featured a goodly sprinkling of show business royalty: Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward were present to wish their Connecticut neighbour, Plummer, success. His 1967 Stratford co-star, Zoe Caldwell, was on hand as well, and prominent Canadians like Kim Cattrall and Peter Jennings showed up to raise the fiag.

A number of staff, board members and friends from Stratford made the journey down and must have been surprised to enter the theatre and discover the famous Festival Stage designed by Tanya Moiseiwitsch had been reproduced exactly.

In most ways, this was a duplication of the production Jonathan Miller directed at Stratford in 2002. Nine of the leading players were the same, three were Stratford veterans new to the cast and the smaller roles were filled by American actors.

The physical production was as stark as ever, with only a minimum of necessary furniture on the stage, allowing Claire Mitchell's rich costumes and Robert Thomson's textured lighting to accomplish the rest.

But if the show is the same in most external ways, it differs internally in a variety of aspects that are all to the good.

To begin with, each of the new Canadian additions adds welcome weight and variety.

Geraint Wyn Davies brings a malevolent sexuality and a chilly air of detachment to his performance of the bastard Edmund. Wyn Davies frequently takes the audience into his con- fidence during his soliloquies, which makes us uneasily complicit in his foul deeds.

As his legitimate brother, Edgar, Brent Carver performs the kind of alchemy only he is capable of, taking a convoluted text and making it clear through the emotional honesty of his commitment to the character. His Christ-like entrance in a loincloth during his mad scene is a risk only Carver could pull off successfully.

And Claire Jullien is at the top of her form as Cordelia, reminding us (as she did with her Miranda in 1999's Stratford Tempest) that she knows how to play a virtuous character with tremendous hidden reserves. The other actors have managed to improve their previous excellent work. James Blendick mines rich depths of pathos as the blinded Gloucester, Benedict Campbell grows ever more subtle and solid as Kent, and Barry McGregor delivers all the black humour in the Fool's double- edged jokes.

With a new Edmund to strike sparks off of, the wicked double act of Domini Blythe's Goneril and Lucy Peacock's Regan becomes exponentially more effective. Miller has gone for more dark comedy this time around, and both women are willing and eager to provide it. Their villainy becomes even more horrible if they elicit our laughter.

But the major event of the evening, more than ever, remains Plummer's performance of the title role.

The shape of the character is the same he revealed at Stratford 18 months ago: a dying old man who rages, goes mad, rediscovers his sanity, finds some peace and then meets a cruel end.

What has changed is the intensity and focus he now brings to all these stages of the journey. His decrepitude is more marked, his rage more corrosive, his madness more heartbreaking and his final moments almost unbearable.

There are still dullish passages when Miller's directorial Puritanism seems more meagre than rewarding, but the credits far outweigh the debits.

Certainly the capacity crowd thought so as they rose to their feet to hail Plummer, a sentiment echoed by Ben Brantley in the New York Times when he praised the veteran actor for bestriding "the boundary between being and nothingness with a brightness sure to stun even long-time admirers of this superb actor. Mr. Plummer creates a portrait for the ages, drawn in self-consuming fire."

All in all, this was the kind of evening the Stratford Festival and its supporters back home will be able to point to for many years with justifiable pride.

Additional articles by Richard Ouzounian