Don’t have weekend plans? Lucky you. Shakespeare in Detroit’s “King Lear” is the best Michigan production of a Shakespeare play that I’ve ever seen.

Frannie Shepherd-Bates’ Stratford-worthy staging brings out the best in a very good, sometimes superb, cast and illuminates the timeless and universal nature of Shakespeare’s text without “updating” its era or location to make it seem so. Certainly, other productions have done that.

What’s different here is its emphasis on “Lear” as an ensemble piece. It’s not just about the title character.

This is not to take away anything from Peter Knox’s powerful and moving performance as the title character. His heartbreaking Lear stands at the center of things, but the king doesn’t stand in a vacuum. Indeed, he never has. But while most productions are remembered because of the actor who plays Lear, Shepherd-Bates has done some canny re-balancing. Things happen onstage to develop character and enhance the action.

For instance, when the Earl of Kent (Dax Anderson) remonstrates with Lear over his banishment of daughter Cordelia (Julia Garlotte), the Duke of Cornwall (Pat Loos), daughter Regan’s husband, gets in Kent’s face like a nightclub bouncer, foreshadowing his brutishness.

And as Cordelia bids farewell to her sisters, Regan and Goneril, (Kennikki Jones and Vanessa Sawson) the latter pair can barely look up from the map that shows the kingdom divided between them.

A little later, when the banished Kent (Dax Anderson), in disguise, has joined Lear, Lear’s Fool (that same Julia Garlotte) arrives and Shepherd-Bates has the Fool silently recognize Kent.

Costume designer Cal Schwartz gets into the act, covering Goneril and Regan in layers of fancy fabric (you want specifics, call Tim Gunn), while Cordelia is bare-shouldered: the prevaricators in strata of deceit, honest Cordelia with nothing to hide.

Shepherd-Bates’ best idea may be having the same actress play both Cordelia and the Fool. The characters never appear onstage together, and both are truth-tellers. Garlotte is a wonder in both parts, changing voice and mannerisms accordingly. With much touching and comforting, the rapport between the Fool and Lear is beautiful to behold.

And that takes us only through what was originally Act One in Shakespeare’s five-act play. Nowadays, “Lear” is performed in two acts. There is so much more going on–the bluster and preening of Jonathan Davidson as evil, conniving Edmund, the hauteur of Sawson’s Goneril (and the most lascivious reading of the line, “Prepare for dinner”)…

Then, there’s this little in-joke for those who know their Shakespeare: during Lear’s confrontation with the elements in a horrific rainstorm, the Fool sings “The rain it raineth every day,” a song from “Twelfth Night” (written earlier, so it’s possible).

The play goes on. I could, too, but enough. And if you do have plans, you’re still in luck: the show runs next weekend, too.

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