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ArtsEmerson’s ‘King Lear’ an engaging production

Susan Saccoccia

A recipient of NEA Arts Journalism fellowships in dance, theater and music, Susan reviews visual and performing arts in the U.S. and overseas.

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ArtsEmerson’s ‘King Lear’ an engaging production
Joseph Marcell as King Lear (Ellie Kurttz photo)

Before Joseph Marcell became Geoffrey the butler in The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, he was an actor in the Royal Shakespeare Company, of England.

Now, Marcell is playing the lead role in King Lear with a touring troupe of another revered company, Shakespeare’s Globe, of London. Presented by ArtsEmerson: The World On Stage, the production is at the Emerson/Paramount Mainstage in Boston through October 23.

Marcell keeps his Lear at a high pitch from the start in this engaging if uneven production of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy, an exploration of the human capacity for truth, loyalty and love as well as blindness, betrayal and cool, calculated destruction.

The play opens with one of the saddest scenes in English-speaking theater. Lear summons his three daughters, Goneril, Regan and Cordelia, and charges them to declare their love for him, promising to size their shares of his kingdom according to the magnitude of their devotion. While her older sisters secure their prizes with outsized claims, Cordelia refuses to take part. She simply affirms that hers is the love a daughter owes a father, no more and no less. Enraged, Lear disowns her, and her suitor, the Duke of Burgundy, withdraws his offer of marriage. But the King of France, standing by, is moved by Cordelia’s honesty and asks her to become his queen.

The Earl of Kent also sees things as they are and defends Cordelia, earning Lear’s banishment. Kent then disguises himself to serve his king, who, after his older daughters turn him out, becomes homeless and goes mad in a wild storm. Meanwhile, a parallel betrayal unfolds as Edmund, the bastard son of the Earl of Gloucester, tricks his father into believing that Edgar, the earl’s legitimate heir, intends to kill him for his inheritance. At the same time, Edmund seduces Goneril, who scorns her husband, the Duke of Albany, for his conscience. Edmund also arouses Regan, while her husband, the Duke of Cornwall, joins his scheme to take over the kingdom.

Along with a fast-moving plot, intense characters and gorgeous language, Shakespeare’s tragedy, mirroring life, also has humor, including a wily Fool who taunts Lear for his follies.

Directed by Bill Buckhurst and acted by an appealing eight-member ensemble performing 17 parts, the production meets its true aim, to draw the audience into the pleasures of live performance. The house lights remain on, the actors tell us at the outset, to replicate the daylight of Shakespeare’s open-air theater. They play vintage musical instruments and sing snatches of old folk tunes as they begin and end each act. Adding to the feeling of a traveling troupe visiting town is the versatile, rustic staging — a two-level scaffold of wood planks and billowing red curtain with a prominent patch.

Aided by sound effects, drums, and quick-change costumes in muted colors, the actors conjure their host of characters and an array of scenes that vary from castles and wild moors to a battlefield.

These costumes include the foppish hat and smock donned by Alex Mugnaioni as the Duke of Burgundy. Lean and handsome, he also plays a sly Duke of Cornwall. In one of his few missteps, the director adds a needless comic turn with his treatment of Edgar, Gloucester’s loyal son. At first, Mugnaioni’s Edgar is a buffoonish scholar who trips over his books and cannot handle a sword. Only later does he gain the prowess and dignity Shakespeare wrote into the character.

Hats are also handy, as Daniel Pirrie, irresistible as the treacherous Edmund, dons a plain cap to signal his transformation into Oswald, Goneril’s amoral servant. Pirrie is also convincing as two of the play’s good characters, the King of France, and a servant who loses his life trying to stop Cornwall and Regan from gouging out Gloucester’s eyes.

In her dual roles as Cordelia and the smart-mouthed Fool, Bethan Cullinane excels at speaking truth to power. Also strong in their parts as Cordelia’s siblings are Gwendolen Chatfield, whose Goneril is a hard-faced beauty, and Shanaya Rafaat, a saccharine but lethal Regan.

True to their classical British training, these actors bring great physical agility to their roles. Directed by Kevin McCurdy, the production’s terrific fight scenes deliver the few moments of moral vindication that Shakespeare has built into the play. It is satisfying to watch Edgar trounce Edmund, deftly using a pole to ward off his brother’s sword.

The superb Bill Nash is a grave and sturdy Earl of Kent. In one of the play’s few scenes of cathartic comedy, the steadfast earl attacks Goneril’s amoral servant Oswald with a spectacular string of insults. After this verbal lashing, Kent also gives Oswald a good thrashing, punishing him for disrespecting the king.

John Stahl also brings gravitas to his roles as Goneril’s justice-minded husband, the Duke of Albany, and as the Earl of Gloucester. In one of this production’s most riveting scenes, Stahl’s Gloucester and Marcell’s Lear meet on a moor in wild a storm. Two fathers who have spurned their loving children, they are mad with grief. As they cling to each another, Gloucester weeps and Lear laughs, and their voices blend into a single cry of anguish.

Here and in the devastating last scene, when Lear steps out bearing the dead Cordelia in his arms, Marcell does justice to Lear’s titanic grief.

The Shakespeare’s Globe production of “King Lear” at the Emerson/Paramount Mainstage runs through October 23.