Of course, the reason you can’t bribe your way into “Lear” is all Hollywood. It stars Ian McKellen, 68, who was merely a terrific British stage and film actor until a few years ago, when the role of Gandalf in “Lord of the Rings” made him an international movie star. But maybe there are other reasons, too, for this frenzy over Shakespeare’s tragically misguided king. The experience of theater is one of the few satisfying live entertainments available in our virtual culture. There’s nothing quite like the risky thrill of sharing a space with breathing, sweating actors—with no possibility of editing, photoshopping, voice dubbing or blue-screen special effects. The relationship between the characters onstage and each member of the audience who’s willing to suspend disbelief is a unique, delicate and deeply personal experience. And there’s “King Lear” itself, perhaps the ultimate contemplation on the nature of man and fate, morality and mortality—in addition to its ever-relevant themes of failed parenting and the dysfunctional family. Up until the 19th century “Lear” was occasionally performed with an altered happy ending: Lear’s daughter Cordelia survived to marry Edgar and rule a united realm. But as scholars such as Marjorie Garber have pointed out, its despairing questions of “being” and “nothing” fit our own times all too well.

So how good is Sir Ian’s “Lear”? You can’t put a price on it. McKellen and the supporting cast, under the direction of Trevor Nunn, have the audience in their grip from the darkly formal opening moment. What’s especially good about McKellen is his craggy, magisterial swagger—he’s not a frail old king at first, but a guy ready to enjoy retirement, to hunt and hang out with his retinue of knights, who are crude as frat boys on Saturday night. He seems so vital and natural, so flesh-and-blood as he laughs at the jokes of his beloved Fool (wonderfully played by Sylvester McCoy as a Marx brother crossed with a music hall vaudevillian). It makes Lear’s disintegration all the more poignant—and helps us understand that the king’s descent into madness is actually not so mad. The stripping away of the trappings of his royal self–and the erosion of his arrogant stubbornness—bring him wisdom in the midst of insanity in the same way that his friend, the blinded Gloucester, finally “sees.” Maybe nothing in theater is as heartbreaking as Lear’s final scene, pared down to the essence of feeling, of grief and horror, as he rocks the corpse of his beloved Cordelia, uttering “Never, never, never, never, never.”

Critic Harold Bloom has said that “King Lear” is a play impossible to perform; it should be read, not produced, as invariably, “our directors and actors are defeated by this play.” Well, yes, its emotional and philosophical complexity, the almost infinite shadings of its poetry, and its unrelieved bleakness make it an incomparable dramatic challenge. No production can be perfect—and Nunn’s isn’t. His thundering soundtrack of music, galloping horse and other effects is one annoying distraction—but the production in most ways is immensely satisfying. McKellen’s Lear is the biggest reason: he has stripped the king of theatrical loftiness and made him so alive. Lear’s significance is in his flaws, not his virtues, and here is a tarnished man, full-blooded in his humanity. Unlike a DVD of a favorite movie you might play over and over again, each production of “King Lear” is new again. For our time, this memorable “Lear” will be counted as one of the greats.