King Lear, at last

Alvin Epstein's 60-year theater career is the stuff of great memoirs.

But the versatile performer and former American Repertory Theatre mainstay says he has no plans to turn his trove of vibrant recollections into a book.

Why, after all, would Epstein, who turned 80 in May, want to sit home and recall an actor's life he is still living -- to the max?

After a three-year hiatus, Epstein is back on a local stage in the Actors' Shakespeare Project's ''King Lear." It's a physically challenging, psychologically taxing role. And despite a career that began on Broadway with Marcel Marceau and included parts opposite three generations of actors, from Bert Lahr to Cherry Jones, Lear is a role Epstein has never played.

''If not now, when?" says the affable actor, digging into a hearty lunch at Matt Murphy's Pub in Brookline Village. ''It's a magnificent play. And it may be the most challenging role for an actor in the English language."

Known as a consummate Beckett actor and director and insightful interpreter of Brecht, Epstein is certainly no slouch when it comes to Shakespeare.

He played the Fool opposite Orson Welles in the legendary director's short-lived 1956 ''King Lear," performed at least a dozen Shakespearean characters at the Yale Repertory Theatre and ART, and directed the Cambridge company's 1980 inaugural production of ''A Midsummer Night's Dream."

''I wanted to play Lear" in the ART's 1991 production, Epstein says. Director Adrian Hall wanted F. Murray Abraham, ''and he got him."

Epstein, who ended up playing Gloucester in Hall's production, shrugs and changes the subject.

'An easy brilliance'Two years ago, Epstein sold his Brookline condo to buy an apartment in Brooklyn, which is close to where most of his work is these days. Epstein has performed in more than 100 productions, nearly half during his 23 years at the ART, where he was last seen waltzing with fellow actor Jeremy Geidt in 2002's ''Lysistrata." Epstein left that show early, to begin work on the New York premiere of ''Tuesdays With Morrie," which opened the following fall. He is still a member of the ART company, and, he says, still considers Greater Boston home.

Since leaving the ART, he's worked steadily, racking up off-Broadway accolades for performances in ''Morrie" and in the Irish Repertory Theatre's revival of Beckett's ''Endgame." He played Nagg, the yapping legless ancient trapped in an ashcan.

''Alvin is one of the most versatile actors I've worked with," says Robert Scanlan, a director, former ART dramaturge, and professor of the practice of theater at Harvard. ''He's danced with Martha Graham, he's trained as a mime. He sang for 20 years with Martha Schlamme -- and on Broadway with Sting! He brings to each role a profound musical sensibility and twice the energy of other actors."

''There's an easy brilliance about Alvin," Scanlan continues. ''He easily absorbs and incorporates things that other actors struggle to do. He tries this, and tries that, and becomes the person he's playing. That is why he's utterly convincing."

Scanlan pauses, as if he hasn't said enough, then adds: ''And Alvin is a regular guy.

Irish Repertory Theatre artistic director Charlotte Moore, who directed Epstein in ''Endgame," agrees. ''He's a top-flight actor with 50 years' experience who doesn't behave like one," she says. Moore admits that she hesitated to cast Epstein, a reputable New York director known for putting the young Dustin Hoffman and Robert Duvall through their paces in the early 1960s and for staging what are considered near-definitive versions of Beckett's plays.

She laughs when she recalls her trepidation about the low-key, dedicated actor.

''In every instance his total commitment is staggering. He will not waver," she says.

A casting coupIt was Epstein's former student and fellow ART actor Benjamin Evett, now artistic director of the Actors' Shakespeare Project, who lured his one-time mentor back to Boston to play the mad king.

The casting was a coup for a young ensemble of seasoned professionals, and it made national news in the entertainment media. ''Broadway's Original Lucky Crowned King Lear in Boston," Playbill announced online. Shortly after his debut with Marceau and his brief but memorable stint with Welles in ''Lear," Epstein played Lucky in the American premiere of ''Waiting for Godot," starring Bert Lahr and E.G. Marshall.

The New York Drama Critics' Circle named him the most promising young performer of the 1955-56 season, a distinction that was well earned, according to Robert Brustein, the ART founding artistic director, who was writing criticism for The New Republic at the time.

''Alvin had the most startling blue eyes and blond hair at the time," says Brustein. ''He also had an extraordinary physical grace that made him an actor early on."

''Laurence Olivier once made the rather cruel remark that when you've got the strength to play Lear you're too young, but when you're old enough, you haven't got the strength," Brustein says.''Well, Alvin is well muscled and trained."

With ''Lear" open, Epstein's former ART castmates have been heading to Boston University to see his performance. Thomas Derrah saw the show on opening night and Will LeBow saw ''Lear" during its first week. Associate artistic director Gideon Lester and actor Jeremy Geidt have seats booked.

Derrah says that Epstein has created a Lear that is all his own.

''At the opening of the play, Lear is almost always performed as if he's this megalomaniac, or tyrant, and there's no reason to like him," says Derrah. ''I love the way that Alvin starts out as a good-humored father. You see humanity, instead of a figure, throughout the play."

An accidental careerThe oldest of three children, Epstein was born in 1925 on a kitchen table in the east Bronx, with a midwife in attendance, he says. His father, a general practitioner, wasn't on hand for the birth of his oldest son. ''This was back in those so-called halcyon days, when there were strict quotas on how many Jews could get into a medical school," says the actor. ''So he went to medical school in Little Rock."

He grew up playing piano and graduated with the first class of New York's School of Music and Art in 1942. He was studying at Queens College when drafted into the Army during World War II.

''I think I thought I was going to be an artist or a composer," says Epstein, who started acting professionally in an Army ensemble at the end of the war. ''When I began as an actor, I think my desire was to be a traditional classical actor," he says. ''Everything else that's happened to me was an accident," he adds, rolling his eyes and raising his palms to the ceiling. in a mime's shrug.

'' 'Waiting for Godot' fell on my head," he says with a laugh. His musical career? ''Another accident," he says.

Epstein excuses himself after a two-hour lunch -- and before he can go into too much detail about his approach to ''Lear."

''This is not the time for me to talk about anyone's Lear -- including my own," he says genially. ''This is a time when your words come back to haunt you. This is the time for me to study."

But what about the character -- the mad and maddening archetypal king, the subject of books, studies, and thespian obsession?

Epstein nods.

''Lear at the opening of the play has unlimited power," he begins. ''He has only a glimmering of his own character. He goes through all the experiences of a lifetime -- the epiphanies, the joys, the loss, and realization, until he is totally pulverized and humanized at the end. And he dies a human being."

For Alvin Epstein, it's really that simple.

Maureen Dezell can be reached at mdezell@globe.com