O, Brave New World

In 2003, an actor named Benjamin Evett was let go from the acting company at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge. He had spent almost two decades - his entire adult life -- in the company, starting onstage when he was an undergraduate at Harvard. But the theater leadership had just changed hands, and that's the way things go. Evett had a wife, two kids, and no job, but he didn't panic. Instead, he got a bunch of local actors together and started a Shakespeare troupe. The story would end here if the company went the way of so many overambitious start-ups, but it doesn't. The theater has not only succeeded, it's become a showcase of a certain can-do spirit and has created new opportunities for many folks, including a stage legend and a retired drama critic.

The company has done some solid work, but it made a national name for itself two years ago with its production of "King Lear" starring Alvin Epstein. Now, Epstein was something of a local treasure around here for many years as a member of the ART acting company, but he left ART and moved to New York to do "Tuesdays with Morrie" on Broadway around the same time Evett got fired. When Evett asked him to come back to do Lear, he had a one-word answer: Yes. And he was magnificent. At 80, he was every inch a king, from the moment he bounded down a staircase to greet his court to the final scene when he collapsed on a pile of mulch on the floor of an old Cadillac showroom ingeniously turned into a theater. This was quite a triumphant comeback, especially since Epstein had played the Fool opposite Orson Welles' in the short-lived 1956 production and had missed his chance to play the king himself when ART staged the play some years ago and a visiting director insisted on bringing in a "star."

The same team is currently presenting 'The Tempest,'' with Epstein as Prospero, and the production is captivating. Now almost 83, Epstein brings a sense of hard-earned wisdom to the role; he seethes, but his rage is tempered with experience rather than bluster. The staging is inventive, this time performed in a high-ceilinged old court room converted into an arts center. The opening storm features a miniature model boat, tossed across a billowing white sheet. Prospero, in top hat and tails, is a sort of Victorian magician, with a similarly clad Ariel as his single-minded assistant. In this stripped-down production, he and Ariel literally pull strings to make their magic happen (although Ariel, in spiky black boots, walks a fine line between dominatrix and sprite, adding a not entirely fitting edge to the role). The magic is not in the wizardry of the stagecraft, but rather in the words, the music, and the performances. And the feeling of melancholy at the end is hard to shake. In the penultimate tableau, Caliban (played by Evett) stands glum and resigned, toting a pair of suitcases for the trip back to Milan. Epstein, a remarkably nimble figure offstage, truly looks as if "every third thought shall be my grave."

But my point here isn't to project more gloom - quite the contrary. When Actors' Shakespeare Project first started, its publicity director was Marianne Evett, mother of the artistic director and retired drama critic for the Cleveland Plain Dealer who donates her time on a volunteer basis. She's now Publications Editor for the troupe. I talked to her the other day about how it felt to go to the Other Side. "I probably had a little agenda,'' she admits, laughing. "But I never felt like I was peddling something that wasn't worth it. What I was doing was not, in a sense, all that different from what I was doing as a critic.'' PR isn't for everyone, but it was for one retired critic. And that's the point here: Second acts are possible in life, even if this brave new world looks bleak for our profession.