Taking the show on the road

A grizzled, diminutive 80-year-old actor playing King Lear lurched around the stage, terrorizing his daughters before descending into madness. Alvin Epstein's performance in the Actors' Shakespeare Project's production last fall was a tour de force. The show drew ecstatic reviews, both locally and nationally, its sold-out run extended twice.

Now ``King Lear" opens tomorrow night in New York as something of an homage to the beloved Epstein, whose career has spanned 50 years.

As soon as the play closed in Boston, artistic director Benjamin Evett and director Patrick Swanson knew they wanted to take it to New York, where Epstein, a longtime Brookline resident, now lives.

The generosity of anonymous donors and the help of several celebrities who had worked with Epstein made that possible. But in every way it's a do-it-yourself affair. To play three weeks at the La MaMa E.T.C., a respected experimental theater group, members of the company had to load and unload trucks, piece together the set, and adjust to a significantly different performance space.

``This is a role of a lifetime for him," Evett explained. ``The culmination of his huge body of work is this absolutely extraordinary production."

Evett and Swanson wanted to give him a chance to do this again, in a place where he could get greater recognition. ``Not a lot of people have seen Alvin do the part of his career," adds Swanson. ``It's a little tiny bit of history."

When told one of the reasons the show was being done again was as a tribute to him, Epstein seemed surprised. ``I thought it was because they wanted the show to be seen in New York," he said . ``But if that's the case, I'm quite honored."

Evett allows that it will offer the young theater company a chance to make a little splash on the national scene. ``Maybe it will give us some press, raise consciousness about the theater."

But he doesn't see it as a chance for the troupe to get a leg-up in New York or set a precedent for moving shows there. Nor do many of the actors, who have already worked in New York and are now content to stay in Boston.

``Maybe when I was 20, going to New York was the big time," says Paula Langton , who plays Regan . ``This time it feels fantastic to be going and equally fantastic to have a company to come back to and continue what we're doing."

Boston University's Studio 102 was an oddly fitting home for a play about the crumbling of kingly power and family dysfunction. The room -- a former Cadillac showroom -- is dominated by two gold-painted pillars, a wide stone staircase, and a commanding fireplace, all giving a medieval air that's both regal and dissolute.

The aesthetics may have been just right, but the room proved to have major challenges. Not designed as a theater, it didn't have sufficient power to run lights and equipment; extension cords snaked through to other rooms.

Then there were those pillars.

Seven months after the show closed, Swanson, a tall, genial Englishman with a fringe of bone-straight white hair, is standing in the space before the assembled cast and crew. He's there to talk about what happens next as ``Lear" makes its way to New York.

He's got mixed feelings about the loss of the columns. Yes, they got in the way of direct movement, but they were also a strong presence: Actors could lean against them, hide behind them. Their energy moved in certain ways because of them, says Swanson.

``I was ambivalent about the space when I first saw it. I said, `You want me to direct here?' Now we'll miss these pillars."

None of those elements will be present at La MaMa's Annex Theater, a large, open space with pressed tin walls. Nearly double the size of the play's previous venue, it will seat 199, a gain of more than 50 seats. This time, the audience will be seated on all four sides, rather than just two. And with its professional lighting and sound system, the theater will certainly be an easier place to work.

The larger space also means the company can raise a bigger racket.

In Studio 102, a bunch of homemade instruments created the memorable storm noises during Lear's wanderings on the heath.

The instruments, a kind of scrap metal sound installation, stand lined up, ready to be moved. They include a steel cello, a kind of dismantled Tin Man; a ``gong drum," a resonator box sandwiched with two gongs; and a bizarre contraption with a bicycle wheel and a lot of jiggly wires, called ``The Instrument." Now the company is adding more sound makers.

``There are a couple of moments when I need a couple of people not in the storm scene, if they wouldn't mind, coming up and banging on something," says music director Bill Barclay (who also plays Oswald) at the meeting. Several actors raise their hands.

On Sunday, moving day, eight days before opening, Barclay takes apart ``The Instrument" and carefully wraps the pieces in felt blankets. Because the company is small and operates on a modest budget -- and because the actors are so passionate about it -- everyone does a bit of everything, including this move.

Evett, Swanson, Barclay, and Robert Walsh, the fight director and artistic associate in charge of production -- and today, truck driver -- take out to the U-Haul two racks of costumes, seven boxes of props, two containers labeled ``blood, " 14 boxes of costumes, a rolled-up rug, four chairs, a stump, and a wooden litter used to carry Lear.

One of the last to go in is ``The Instrument."

The truck slowly fills, and an hour later is also loaded with 40 bags of rubber mulch -- a recycled product made from ground-up tires most often seen in playgrounds. In the show, the mulch, layered about 1 1/2 inches deep on the floor, provides a common ground cover for a play that segues from castle to heath.

On the trip down to New York, Swanson, who's driving Evett and a reporter, talks about how the play came to La MaMa. The theater's founder, Ellen Stewart, now around 90, he guesses, was partial to the idea of hosting ``Lear." Swanson had worked with La MaMa way back in 1969.

She bent over backward to create the three-week opening the show needed, extending the theater's operations a week into the summer and moving a two-week dance concert.

Swanson also had a lot of juggling to make this work. He's the artistic director of Revels, the song/dance/folktale performance group that puts on lavish productions at Christmas and at other times.

In addition to ``Lear," he's directing a Revels show that opens Saturday, which also happens to be the date that his wife is due with their second child. Swanson, who monitors his cellphone very carefully, says he's having ``a triple birth."

Evett started the Actors' Shakespeare Project in 2003 when his longtime contract with the American Repertory Theatre was not renewed. He envisioned a troupe, made up of the area's finest classically trained actors, that would perform site-specific productions of Shakespeare in a variety of settings. He did get those actors and the productions have been well-received.

The budget for the New York production, he says, is approximately $100,000, compared with $65,000 for the Boston run, which grew to $80,000 because of the show's two extensions.

At first, Evett wasn't sure the money could be raised. At a fund-raiser in an elegant New York apartment in March, Epstein performed several scenes from the play. And his group of supporters, including actors Mandy Patinkin , Cherry Jones , Debra Winger , and her husband , Arliss Howard , who were part of what became known as ``The Committee to Bring `King Lear' to New York," stepped forward with needed cash.

What if New York doesn't receive this show with the same support Boston did? What if the play is a flop?

``What if it is?" Evett shoots back. ``I can't imagine it can do much to us. If we sell no tickets, that might increase challenges in the coming year. But we ended the second season in a solid financial position. We should do well enough with it to cover its expenses."

On Monday morning, Sara Stackhouse , the company's executive producer, is standing in the wide-open space of La MaMa.

She has to laugh. ``At the other place, we did all these things to make the plaster look like it was falling off. And look, here it is falling off!"

Still, she and the others are glad to be here, some seven months after the planning began -- a very short time in the world of theater. The truck and car arrived the night before. The staff and crew members have all found their ways down, some by car, some bus.

Evett is already there, working with La MaMa stagehands to bolt together wooden risers that will later hold chairs. Others, sitting on the floor, check to make sure each light is properly assembled.

The actors are nowhere to be seen. They're resting; for the next three days they'll have long rehearsals. By Tuesday, the mulch will be laid. And by the endof Wednesday, Epstein will say the new space, without the pillars, initiallypresented some problems but thatthe production is actually ahead of schedule.

On this day, Swanson, Evett , and Barclay discuss the best place to put the gong drum. They spy a narrow platform jutting out from the balcony and gingerly carry the instrument in pieces up the stairs. Barclay inches the resonator box out onto the platform and attaches the gongs on each end.

``Hello, everybody," Evett warns the dozen stagehands below. ``Big noise coming."

Catherine Foster can be reached at foster@globe.com.