In the classic absurdist comedy “Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead,” playwright Tom Stoppard focuses on two minor characters, the titular courtiers, in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.” After encountering a band of players, the pair, relegated to the wings and befuddled by the onstage action, ponder their existence.
For actor Will LeBow – who will appear as The Player in the Huntington Theatre Company production of “Rosencrantz & Guildenstern” that begins performances Sept. 20 at Boston’s Huntington Avenue Theatre – “Hamlet” was a very different experience.
“Forty years ago this month, I played Hamlet in a Boston Shakespeare Company production at Horticultural Hall. It was thrilling – a dream-come-true experience for me,” recalled LeBow by telephone from Boston last week. “When I walk by there now, it all comes back to me.”
LeBow spent three years with the company run by playwright Bill Cain, where his “Hamlet” co-stars included actor-turned-television-newsman Steve Aveson, formerly with NECN and now at KRON-TV in San Francisco, and Cathy Rust, currently Director of the Women’s Playwrights Series at Centenary Stage Company in Hackettstown, New Jersey.
What would become a dream role began with a few nightmares for the then up-and-comer.
“I felt a sense of terror while we were rehearsing ‘Hamlet.’ I kept thinking, ‘How am I going to play this role? How am I going to say this line?’ Fortunately, a couple of weeks before we opened, the entire company went to a lecture that Ben Kingsley (“Ghandi”) gave at Brandeis.
“During his talk, Kingsley recalled the first time he played the Danish prince. Afterward, I spoke with him for a moment and he told me that it is a privilege to do this kind of work. That’s stuck with me ever since,” says LeBow.
Although he has earned acclaim performing Shakespeare, LeBow’s early experiences with the Bard came as an audience member.
“Joseph Papp used to send out Shakespeare productions in touring trucks that traveled from Manhattan to the boroughs. It was at Forest Park, in Queens where I grew up, that I first saw Shakespeare’s plays.
“As a 12-year-old, I watched a young James Earl Jones and a young Christopher Plummer do ‘Othello’ and the Scottish Play in repertory on alternating nights,” he recalls. “It was just amazing. I was mesmerized.”
He wasn’t even in his teens yet, but LeBow was already on his way.
“By the age of 20, I had moved to Manhattan, and not long after, I saw Stacy Keach as Falstaff in ‘Henry IV, Part 1,’” recalls LeBow. “Here was this old, fat guy on stage, being played by an actor who was young and thin off stage.”
Those cumulative experiences helped steer LeBow toward what would become his passion and his life’s work.
“Shakespeare has had a huge impact on me. I believe it’s why we do what we do, and why we live the way we live. I deeply love the Shakespeare plays.
“And so, when I saw those professional productions, I thought, ‘If I could do this for a living, I wouldn’t have to be rich,’” he says.
The veteran performer has done numerous Shakespeare plays and more since then, including spending 17 seasons (1993–2009) with what was then the acting company of the American Repertory Theater at Harvard University in Cambridge.
LeBow appeared in more than 50 A.R.T. productions, many with his “great pal,” the late Thomas Derrah, including “The Idiots Karamazov,” (1998-’99), “Full Circle,” and “Nocturne” (both 2000), and “Endgame” (2009).
He has also previously been seen at the Huntington Theatre Company in “Awake and Sing!” (2014), “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” (2012), “Bus Stop” (2010), “The Cherry Orchard” (2007), “The Rivals” (2005), and the world premiere of “Sonia Flew” in 2004.
For the past 40 years, LeBow – who made his Broadway debut in 2014’s “Act One” at Lincoln Center Theater – has also regularly appeared with the Boston Symphony and Boston Pops orchestras. During the upcoming Holiday Pops season, he will serve as narrator for “The Polar Express.”
Along the way, he spent 14 years as both an actor and director with the Boston company of “Shear Madness” at the Charles Playhouse, which he describes as “the most fun you can have as an actor.”
And, as he proved in that long-running show and for six seasons on the animated Comedy Central series “Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist,” where he provided the voice of Stanley, LeBow knows how to get a laugh.
“I’ve done over 100 stage productions in my career so far, and maybe 1,000 voice-overs for everything from television shows to industrials and commercials.
“For seven or eight years, I was the voice of the Chili’s Fajita Guy, a character from Brooklyn who had trouble pronouncing the word ‘fajita,’” says the versatile performer.
In 2012, after living in Cambridge for 30 years, LeBow pronounced himself ready for a change and relocated to the town of Becket.
“It was time to take a break and find a little place in the Berkshires – the antithesis of Manhattan where I spent so much of my early life. Living in nature changes your brain in all good ways.
“I’ve acted at Williamstown Theatre Festival, but I didn’t move to the Berkshires to work,” he explains. “I moved out there to clear my head.”
Clearing his calendar was another story, however, for the in-demand actor. And so, while home is bucolic Becket, LeBow will travel for the right part – like his current one.
“The Player is a great role. I get to do comedy, play some intimate truths, and do some swashbuckling – three things that don’t always come together,” says LeBow, who took classes in fencing while a student at the City College of New York.
“My character is the voice of Stoppard. And what the play does, without naming it, is deal with determinism over free will. I see free will as a myth, which I believe is how Stoppard sees it as well.”
To support that theory, LeBow cites his favorite line from the text: “There is no choice, and truth is only what is taken to be true.”
When it comes to the play, being directed in Boston by the Huntington’s artistic director Peter DuBois, LeBow knows that finding the truth in Stoppard’s comedy is key.
“Comedy is very serious business, because we laugh at things that come from the serious. To get really good comedy, you need a connection with reality.
“In ‘Rosencrantz & Guildenstern,’ the situation is just serious enough to be funny as hell,” points out LeBow. “If you play it straight, you can tap into the absurd reality that makes it so hilarious.”