Elisabeth Vincentelli

Elisabeth Vincentelli

Theater

Frank Langella brings a fine but predictable ‘King Lear’ to BAM

For ambitious actors of a certain age, “King Lear” is a rite of passage. The hair’s going, the beard’s graying — and suddenly they feel the urge to sink their teeth into some mad-monarch business.

Lately, Ian McKellen, Sam Waterston, Derek Jacobi and Kevin Kline all climbed that mountain.

Now it’s Frank Langella’s turn.

A multiple Tony winner, most recently for 2007’s “Frost/Nixon,” Langella is known for scenery-chewing flamboyance. Surprisingly, he’s relatively restrained here.

But then, Angus Jackson’s streamlined, accessible production, which comes to BAM from the UK’s Chichester Festival, is short on both fireworks and insight. If you’ve seen the play before, the show won’t cast any new light. And those new to “Lear” may wonder what the fuss is about.

The whole point seems to be to provide a workable setting for Langella’s performance — no theatrical high concept pulls your attention away from him. Everything’s very basic, from Robert Innes Hopkins’ period costumes to his distressed-wood set.

Langella has that rarest of qualities: undeniable stage presence. When he’s on, everybody else recedes into the background.

But his Lear goes through the emotions — tyrannical, then mad, then redeemed but broken — in a predictable way. He’s exactly as you’d expect.

And while Langella confidently projects to the rafters, he also rumbles and grumbles so much that the text gets lost. It’s especially bad in the famous storm scene. Between Langella’s garbled diction and the actual rain pouring onstage, Lear gets drowned out, indeed.

The rest of the cast doesn’t even come close to overshadowing the star.

The production’s most interesting move is the 24-year-old Fool of Harry Melling (best known as Harry Potter’s obnoxious cousin, Dudley Dursley).

That character isn’t usually that young, so his speaking the truth in the face of violence, betrayal and lunacy is all the more striking.

Denis Conway is an appropriately troubled Gloucester, but Max Bennett, Catherine McCormack and Lauren O’Neil are barely adequate as the villainous Edmund, Goneril and Regan, respectively. As for Isabella

Laughland’s Cordelia, she sticks to a single, vaguely afflicted expression, as if suffering from a pesky headache.

Disappointed? Fear not, there’s always another “Lear” around the corner — literally, as Theater for a New Audience is doing one half a block away from BAM in March.