THE Globe Theatre’s award-winning small-scale touring programme will be stopping off at Hedingham Castle this weekend with a new production of King Lear.

Using an Elizabethan-style booth stage – inspired by paintings and etchings from Shakespeare’s time – eight actors will bring the production to the castle in the only Essex stop of their European tour.

Directed by Bill Buckhurst, the title role will be played by Joseph Marcell, who became famous playing the sarcastic, Oxford-educated butler Geoffrey in the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air – the American comedy that made Hollywood A-lister Will Smith a star.

Joseph is no stranger to Shakespeare, having played a number of important roles in the past, including Othello and Brutus.

At Shakespeare’s Globe in London, he has acted in Coriolanus and Much Ado About Nothing, and he has been on the Globe’s council since he met its founder, Sam Wanamaker, in the Eighties, when the reconstructed theatre was still at the planning stage.

He is used to “the shock of faces, right there” as an actor steps on to the Globe stage. This promises to be another enjoyable experience, as he and the other seven actors in the company perform in a variety of locations – in this country and abroad – from Turkey to Denmark, culminating in his birthplace, St Lucia.

Now in his sixties and a veteran of stage and screen, both here and in the United States, Joseph is relishing getting into Lear’s mind.

He has thought about the symptoms of dementia and even Parkinson’s disease, but, he says: “Too much research and you are in danger of gilding the lily.

“Really, it’s the story of a family, of a man and his three daughters and how they have disappointed his expectations. He behaves almost like a jilted lover.”

Joining him is the New Zealand stage and screen actor Rawiri Paratene, star of the critically-acclaimed film Whale Rider, who plays Gloucester.

The scaled-down production of the Shakespearean play sees King Lear give up his crown and divide his kingdom between his three daughters, only for his generosity to be cruelly repaid.

Shot through with poetry, moments of humour and heart-rending simplicity, the production explores the human condition in all its extremes.

King Lear, Hedingham Castle, Bayley Street, Castle
Hedingham.
Saturday and Sunday. 6pm.
£17.50 for adults and £12 for children and concessions.
www.hedinghamcastle.co.uk