Shakespeare’s Globe is on the road and it starts its international tour of King Lear at Margate’s Theatre Royal. The title role will be played by Joseph Marcell, best known for appearing alongside Will Smith in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. He spoke to Heather Neill about the production.

Geoffrey would be impressed.

Joseph Marcell, who became famous playing the sarcastic, Oxford-educated butler of that name in the American sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, is tackling the pinnacle of classical acting: King Lear.

Marcell says not a day goes by without someone approaching him to meet “Geoffrey”, but fans may not be aware of his distinguished acting credentials.

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 1980s when the reconstructed theatre was still at the planning stage.

This is not his first appearance in King Lear, as in 2010 he appeared as Kent in a production at the Old Globe in San Diego.

Marcell will be joining six other actors in a small touring company to perform the tragedy in a variety of places in the UK and abroad, ending up at his birthplace, St Lucia.

Everyone (except Marcell himself) doubles parts, and setting the scene as a troupe of travelling players who decide to stage the show, they deftly change costume, play instruments and generate a storm with the help of a thunder sheet and a Victorian wind machine, all in full view of the audience.

Now in his sixties, Marcell says he 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.”

The final scene in which Lear howls over the body of daughter Cordelia is, Marcell says: “Magic, pure theatre, but heart-breaking. At the end he has nothing, but at his death there is forgiveness, peace and redemption.”

A TV favourite

The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air aired on NBC from 1990 to 1996.

It starred Will Smith as a fictionalised version of himself, a street-smart teenager from West Philadelphia sent to live with his aunt and uncle in their luxurious Bel Air mansion.

King Lear runs at Margate’s Theatre Royal from Thursday, April 18 to Saturday, April 20. Tickets from £15. Call 01843 292795.