Sept. 13 (Bloomberg) -- ``King Lear'' may well be the greatest play ever written, but Lear is even more likely the hardest role to play. It requires a perfectly graduated 180- degree revolution from despot to philosopher. Typically, the young actor who has the stamina for it lacks the experience, both histrionic and existential; the elder one who has it lacks the strength.

Yet, as with any rule, there are exceptions. The best Lear I have seen was, many years ago, the youthful William Devlin at the Brattle Theater, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In Brooklyn, the Royal Shakespeare Company's 68-year-old incumbent, Ian McKellen, I would rate as roughly B-plus; better than I expected but less than I would wish for.

McKellen looks great and acts the part well enough, aside from occasional patches of incomplete concentration and projection. But there is a leap from acting a role to inhabiting, and ultimately transcending, it. Lear demands such a leap, which McKellen fails to make. Of course, it helps if the production framing Lear is also up to snuff. Here, alas, are several performances that should be snuffed out.

Moreover, Trevor Nunn, the distinguished director, strikes me as having made some faulty choices. The text roundly evokes a polytheistic society, and though ancient British history may not play well visually, neither do we want costumes that are part Victorian England, part imperial Russia, complete with Cossacks.

The set for the first half is a 19th-century opera house: an elegant row of boxes with red drapes and upholstery. Later, we get it stripped bare and in ruins, with rotting timbers up top and on the side, sometimes supplemented with large wooden objects of indeterminate function.

Tumbledown Doghouse

Most embarrassing is the hovel on the stormy heath, looking like a lopsided, tumbledown doghouse, almost too flat for a dachshund, although one or another actor must slither through it. True, Christopher Oram had to design scenery adaptable for a touring production, but some concession to credibility would not have been amiss.

Perhaps the best sign of vacillation is the weaponry. Some of the participants carry firearms to threaten with or randomly shoot off, but the actual fighting is done with swords and daggers, and, in one case, a pole. There is similar inconsistency in the battle scenes, where some characters are in uniform, but Regan and Goneril sport the ball gowns they have been wearing all along.

One thing is right: the avenging Edgar does not appear in glittering armor, as he inexplicably does in some productions.

Undistinguished Acting

But what of the acting? William Gaunt is a persuasive Gloucester, even when misdirected into prolonged sobbing in mad Lear's lap. Romola Garai is a fine-looking and acting Cordelia, and Philip Winchester's Iago-cum-humor works nicely for the bastard Edmund. Some others are passable but undistinguished. And then there are the disasters, partly, I presume, through misdirection.

Take the evil sisters: the smarmy Goneril of Frances Barber and the naughtily infantile Regan of Monica Dolan, both broadcasting their wickedness from start to finish. Even worse is the middle-aged Fool of Sylvester McCoy, repellent and often incomprehensible, even when he does not have to accompany himself with metallic clappers or squeakily sing to the accompaniment of a soldier's primitive accordion.

He is evenly matched in incomprehensibility by Ben Meyjes, tolerable as Edgar but opaque as Tom. Most disappointing is Jonathan Hyde's Kent, rough-hewn to the max but without an ounce of mitigating charm.

Brilliant Bolts

Steven Edis's music fluctuates between acceptable and not, as in the Onyeginish waltz to which a shadow is seen bobbing on a backdrop. When it comes to Fergus O'Hare's lightning and thunder, the former outdazzles anything ever seen, the latter detonates almost beyond endurance. If only some of the acting had that much luster and resonance.

Nowadays there exists the regrettable custom in which the director supplies some excogitated, shock-producing touches. Nunn, though comparatively sparing, can't have none. So he begins the play with an unscripted royal dumb show, has Lear reading his resignation speech from 3-by-5 cards, ends his first half with the Fool being elaborately hanged, and brings out the corpses of Goneril and Regan in handsome shifts that no battlefield should be without.

As for Lear (and this, surely, is more McKellen than Nunn), although he is supposed to be ``every inch a king,'' he gives us several inches of frontal nudity that neither Shakespeare nor we bargained for, though they may work as a form of self- advertisement.

In rotating repertory with ``The Seagull'' through Sept. 30 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Harvey Theater, 651 Fulton St., Brooklyn. Information: +1-718-636-4100; http://www.bam.org.

(John Simon is the New York drama critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer on this story: John Simon in New York at jis1925@aol.com.

Last Updated: September 13, 2007 00:03 EDT