Ever since John Wilkes Booth proved unreliable America has been wary of itinerant Shakspearean actors. But Morris Carnovsky in his two years of touring in Lear since the original Stratford, Connecticut triumph, has reinstated their good name. Carnovsky, now a Brandeis faculty member, has mounted a Lear at the Spingold Theatre which is endued with the high finish and control that was often absent in the hastily-arranged touring performances.

Working on a slanting Elizabethan-style stage, Carnovsky's Lear commands all stage movement, dominating the vertical and letting lesser figures play on a horizontal plane.

His voice dives, soares and trembles with his role. On the throne, his voice is deep, yet forced and cracked like Lear's authority. At Regan's castle, Lear mutters and sputters in tone anger. As he rages against the storm the voice nears a shriek. At the end it is a quavering sigh.

Carnovsky's control is never more evident than in Lear's physical senility. The king flings an arm upward to be imperous, but the fingers tremble in the stagelight. A fist shaken in anger seems to swing limply for an eternity as Lear's age vainly fights inertia. The movements are often ungainly or painfully awkward. Carnovsky is never afraid to make Lear look ridiculous.

For Carnovsky's Lear is an old man who recognizes his age too late. His rages are desperate graspings for the authority he can no longer wield over his daughters or his kingdom. When he finally realizes his true state, when he sees "how wretches feel," he is calm; but it is a tragic, disquieting calm. Since he lacks power to implement them, his compassion and his forgiveness to Cordelia serve only to pain him. In the final scene, deep in grief over Cordelia's death, Carnovsky distractedly twines his hair. It knots, like the hair of Poor Tom the Bedlam beggar. Stripped of authority Lear is mad.

Carnovsky's strong definition of Lear's character quite naturally carries over into his directing. Each role is clearly outlined against the character of Lear. Within this fairly rigid framework some of the supporting players were outstanding. David Grimm's Fool didn't whine, mince his steps or sing in falsetto; in short he was masculine, a rarity in the role. Peter MacLean as Kent and Nicholas Kepros as Edgar had to sustain an air of good sense and authority through the play's anarchistic denouement. They did. The scenes during the storm when the disgusted Kent watches Lear, Tom and the Fool dancing madly across the Spingold's tilted stage were striking and lyrical.

However, there can be too much directorial control and some players seem content merely to don the assorted masks that Carnovsky parcelled out. This foible seemed the particular property of the villains. Matt Conley in the most unkindest role of all, the bastard Edmund, exercised enough wit and restraint to stay this side of melodrama. But Regan (Phoebe Brand) and Goneril (Ludi Claire) ranted and raved, groaned and grimaced. Robert Benedict's Oswald was arch and despicable, Nick Smith's Cornwall took appropriate relish in kicking out Gloucester's eyes; these actors' evil was far too lunatic to be cruel. The audience tittered.

The heavies' heavy-handed make-up job was more yahoo than human. The hair of Edmund and Cornwall was plastered, their cheeks puffed. The two sisters looked equally horrid. Their hair must have been set with an eggbeater. Even Carnovsky's make-up, while giving his face the cast of a Biblical patriarch, seemed at times rigid enough to hide expression.

Christopher Lloyd supplied his own rigidity in tone and movement in the role of Albany. Cynthia Bebout's Cordelia and Laurence Hugo's Gloucester were competent but would have done well to listen to Carnovsky's use of his voice. Both maintained a clear resonant stage voice even when supposedly in the throes of despair and physical pain.

The set, designed by Howard Bay, was hard to believe, but it worked. Two bizarrely carved pseudo-stone things hung above the stage and see-sawed back and forth at scene changes. They were a bit unnerving, but combined with Bay's vivid lighting and Conrad Susa's music they added to a ritualistic atmosphere that Carnovsky often exploited in his staging.

It was in the 1963 Stratford, Connecticut Shakespeare Festival that Carnovsky, under Allen Fletcher's direction, first played Lear. Since that time Carnovsky's power in the role has steadily increased. We can only wish him many happy Lears to come.