Playwright tackles ‘daunting challenge’ of too little rehearsal time

Playwright John Lowell got the idea for “The Standby Lear” from a young friend who was the understudy to an actor playing Hamlet. The understudy had to perform the role and wound up with a scar on his chin because he hadn’t had adequate time to rehearse the play’s fight scenes.

“I thought about the idea of going on on short notice,” Lowell said in a telephone interview from his New York City home. “What if a 70-year-old actor was going on as King Lear?” he said.

The actor, Augie, is “facing an extremely daunting challenge” in playing the role, Lowell said. And, like Lear, he “is aging, past his prime and making disastrous decisions,” Lowell said. 

“King Lear,” first performed in 1606, is considered one of William Shakespeare’s greatest plays, along with “Hamlet.” Lear is among theater’s most demanding and most coveted roles for an older actor.

“I realized a few years ago that I was of an age when I could consider the possibility that I could play Lear, as most of the other great Shakespearean roles were passing me by,” said David Edwards, who has starred in plays and musicals in Las Cruces for more than 50 years and was in the original New Mexico State University production of “Children of a Lesser God” by Mark Medoff. “It is such a physically challenging role, not to mention the brainpower required, that I doubt that I would be up for it – a sad thing to admit,” said Edwards, who turned 69 earlier this month.

Augie is joined in the play by his wife, Anna, who also is an actor. Both “are in the third act of their lives in a three-act,” Lowell said. They are the play’s only characters.

Like many of his plays, “The Standby Lear” is a “lock-in” play – from lights up to the final curtain, “there are no exits and no new information,” Lowell said. “That forces the characters to confront who they are and what they are. This is the moment and this is what we have to deal with.”

All of Lowell’s plays, he said, are about people.

“My plays do have messages,” Lowell said, but delivering a message is not the point.

“I think the best plays are the ones where we become enchanted, entranced, maybe even repelled by the characters,” he said. “We really want to watch them.”

Communicating ideas can be important for a playwright, Lowell said, “but if I’ve not entertained you, if I’ve bored you, then the game is over.”

Lowell, 59, was born on Long  Island, New York, and educated in Boston. He moved to New York City at age 20 and has lived there continuously except for four years in Los Angeles. His favorite play is Anton Chekov’s “Uncle Vanya.”

Visit http://johnwlowell.com/.