Lead performance crowns ‘Lear’ at Hawaii Shakespeare Festival

Hawaii stage veteran Richard Valasek does a magnificent job as the doomed title character in the Hawaii Shakespeare Festival’s latest staging of “King Lear,” running through Aug. 5 at the Arts at Marks Garage.

Valasek dominates the stage physically while driving much of the action with finely nuanced acting.

“Lear” is the only play in Shakespeare’s canon that the festival has presented three times. The current production, with R. Kevin Garcia Doyle directing, lives up to the standards set in the 2004 and 2014 productions, the latter featuring an all-female cast.

The story opens with the elderly Lear dividing his kingdom between his three daughters. Goneril and Regan express their love in exaggerated terms and are rewarded accordingly. Cordelia speaks without exaggeration and is disinherited. Things quickly go downhill for the retired king and those still loyal to him thereafter.

Sharon Garcia Doyle (Goneril) and Katherine Aumer (Regan) give meticulously detailed performances as the wicked sisters, adding depth to the action even when silent. Kirk L. Lapilio Jr. (Albany) and Paul Yau (Cornwall) provide Doyle and Aumer consistently strong support as the sisters’ compliant husbands.

Eden Lee Murray (Lear’s Fool) is delightfully successful in bringing Shakespeare’s 17th century wit to a 21st century audience. She received well-deserved laughter from Friday’s sold-out, opening night audience.

Ryan Bechard (Edmund), playing the most villainous of the villains, earned appreciative laughter early for a cynical monologue and later for his nonverbal embellishments. Brandon DiPaola’s tragicomic performance as Tom o’ Bedlam — the disguised fugitive Edgar of Gloucester — neatly balanced comedy and pathos.

The only glitch in the show is that Doyle apparently couldn’t find enough male actors. The show benefits from having an actor of Murray’s caliber play the Fool regardless of gender, but several other characters look like what they are — women wearing paste-on moustaches.