E-Mail This Article to a Friend Mount Lear Alvin Epstein and Patrick Swanson prepare for the climb BY SALLY CRAGIN

In Shakespeare’s canon, there are kings — and then there’s King Lear. "It’s a mountain," marvels Patrick Swanson, artistic director of Revels Inc., who helms the upcoming Actors’ Shakespeare Project production of the Bard’s monumental tragedy. "I’d been happily doing my Revels productions for some years when this was wheeled in front of me. It’s like having K2 appear in your life. It required a very considered response."

Atop K2 is esteemed actor and American Repertory Theatre veteran Alvin Epstein, who’ll play the royal father who doesn’t know best. "He packs a huge punch and he knows how to calibrate that so that when he delivers the goods — hits his highs — they’re as high as you’d ever want anyone to go," Swanson says of the actor.

But Lear offers a famous performing paradox: when an actor is finally old enough to play the king, is he strong enough? Epstein, a dynamic 80, notes that the biggest demand is stamina. "There’s nothing particularly difficult except at the end when you carry in Cordelia" — who in this production will be played by Sarah Newhouse, a former student of Epstein’s at the ART/MXAT Institute. "We did an experimental hug and lift when we first saw each other at rehearsal, but I’m not worried about it. She looks as svelte and slim as she ever did." He adds that "when [John] Gielgud was asked, ‘What do you require to play Lear?’, he said, ‘A light Cordelia.’ But seriously, what you need is the energy to carry you through the rather enormous temperamental switches in the play."

Epstein has appeared in two productions of Lear: he played Gloucester to F. Murray Abraham’s Lear at the ART in 1991 and the Fool to Orson Welles’s 1956 king. Each time, he wished he’d been playing the title role. He recalls with dismay how "scattered" Welles was. "He was also directing, supervising the lights, designing the scenery, and probably having a lot to do with the costumes."

Now that he’s actually got the part, the actor finds Lear eye- and ear-opening. "I’ve played a lot of Shakespeare, and I’ve directed a lot of Shakespeare. I can tell you that this time it’s like I never knew the play before. The big discovery that you find is that the text carries you — tells you where to go emotionally because it forces you into certain rhythms. The rhythms of those words produce emotion."

Swanson, meanwhile, marvels at the ambition and cohesion of ASP, which is inaugurating its second season with Lear. "They function as an ensemble and have an ongoing interest in developing a company æsthetic. That appeals enormously. How many times in your life does somebody offer you a group of mature and interesting actors in a setting that focuses on the language and psychology of Shakespeare compared with what you’d call, in quotes, ‘production values’?"

Actors’ Shakespeare Project | King Lear | Studio 102, BU College of Fine Arts, 855 Comm Ave, Boston | September 29–October 23 | $35-$40 | 866-811-4111 or http://www.actorsshakespeareproject.org/