goTriad.com

HIGH POINT - Most actors dream of playing Hamlet. For Graham Smith, it was always Lear.

"Hamlet never compelled me," the actor says. "But even in college I would watch 'Lear' and think, 'Someday I want to do that.'"

Smith gets his chance next Saturday when he takes the stage as Lear in the North Carolina Shakespeare Festival. This is only the third time in the festival's 32 years that it will perform the play.

It was previously performed in 1993.

"Lear is a unique opportunity for anyone. The character is 80 or 85, and some people say you can't understand it until you're that age," says Smith, 53. "But I always remember playing the Fool in a production and walking off-stage with Lear and hearing the actor say to himself, 'Too late, too late.' I don't know if you ever feel you're ready for the role, but you can obviously be too old for the energy it requires."

In the Shakespeare tragedy, the aged title character is ready to step down from the throne of Britain and divide the kingdom among his three daughters: Goneril, Regan and Cordelia. But he makes a grave misstep when he decides to allocate the lands according to how well each woman speaks of her love for him. While Goneril and Regan step all over themselves to flatter their father, Cordelia -- Lear's favorite -- refuses to adorn her heartfelt sentiment.

Outraged, Lear disowns Cordelia and gives her land to her sisters. But they soon show their true colors and cast Lear, along with his Fool, out of their homes.

Their squabbling also threatens the stability of Britain, so Cordelia aligns herself with France to restore Lear to the throne.

"Lear might be the central character, but the story of family is much bigger than his story," Smith says. "It wouldn't be as big and interesting if Lear's actions didn't resound through several families and servants. There aren't fairies or rustics that take you away from the main story. The journey is relentless, and the whole play is about that resonance."

Certain scenes in "King Lear" are as iconic as a "Hamlet" soliloquy, and many an actor has crashed and burned in the role by, in Smith's opinion, over-thinking and over-planning.

"I'm finding that the role is not this huge rage against the storm, but is found in the small and the pedestrian and the everyday," he says. "The play is so well balanced that if I follow the rhythm of its language and the construction of its thoughts - if I don't get in the way, in other words, by trying to make it a definitive portrayal - the story will unfold and be as riveting as it's meant to be."

Smith says there's also comfort in knowing he can rely on others in the cast, most of whom he has worked with many times in his 13 years with the festival, dating to 1987. He also gets the occasional break from Lear's intensity during rehearsals for "Much Ado About Nothing," the festival's other MainStage production which opens Saturday. Smith plays Verges, the deputy to Dogberry, helping to provide the broadest humor in Shakespeare's popular romantic comedy.

But Lear is never far from his thoughts; the role has been known to consume actors of any age -- Sir John Gielgud , for example, played it at age 26 and nearly 90.

"It's a thrilling ordeal," Smith admits. "But I think it's only exhausting if you're on stage trying to muster up 'acting.' I'm up to this if I can bring both confidence and humility to the role. But if I proclaimed, 'I'm up to this,' I'd end up being at a loss."

Leslie Mizell is a freelance contributor. Contact her at LAMizell@aol.com.