About last night: A tale of flawed fathers in a flawless new home

The two aging fathers have suffered all manner of trials and torture by the time they find themselves sitting together, back-to-back.

King Lear has disowned one daughter for not adequately professing her love for him. He has been set upon by his two other designing daughters who have insulted and abused him, dismissing him as old, irrelevant and crazy. His royal garments have been reduced to a half-open dress shirt and a pair of boxer shorts, his crown replaced by a weedy garland. His legs are muddy, his eyes wild.

The Earl of Gloucester is blind, bloodied and suicidal, haunted by the vision of his elder son, Edgar, whom he has disowned. His conniving illegitimate son, Edmund, has convinced the father of Edgar’s supposed treachery. And out Edgar went.

They have acted rashly, these fathers, and here they sit, so much the worse for wear. The tempest has passed but their torment continues.

Gloucester weeps.

Then, in a moment of sweet tenderness, his king comforts him the way a father soothes a sobbing child.

There, there.

That moment alone is enough to recommend a visit to “King Lear” in the shiny new Samuel H. Scripps Theater Center at Hudson Valley Shakespeare in Garrison, in repertory with “As You Like It” and, starting Aug. 12, “Les Miserables.”

But there are so many other reasons to see this “Lear,” starring Kurt Rhoads as the fractured and fragile monarch and directed by HVS Artistic Director Davis McCallum.

This Lear belongs to Rhoads, Hudson Valley Shakespeare royalty, a perennial reason to picnic and return to the Hudson Highlands on a summer night. Rhoads’ Lear is by turns rage and action, innocence and confusion. He is not who he was, and it petrifies him.

“I fear I am not in my perfect mind,” he says.

Rhoads mines moments of humor and tenderness that will break your heart. When at last he reconciles with Cordelia (the reliably fine Melissa Mahoney), there’s wonder in his voice when he asks, innocently: “Be your tears wet?”

This Lear bears all to the point of breaking and, at one point, bares all, running naked into the Hudson Valley night. The moment brought laughter, but then nods of recognition. He has lost all, to the point of being newborn, the unaccommodated man stripped of any royal trappings, honest.

McCallum’s supporting cast is equally strong.

There’s Katie Hartke and Helen Cespedes, as Goneril and Regan, the daughters whose love for their father is professed and when tested, abandoned. Hartke’s eyes flash with intrigue, a better soldier than her husband, (the solid Anand Nagraj as Albany). Cespedes pushes her husband (Sean McNall as Cornwall) and wields the dagger when called upon. Later, she slinks and beguiles Edmund, an agenda of ambition in a red dress. (The costumes, by Elizabeth Hope Clancy, are fantastic.)

The excellent Nance Williamson plays Lear’s Fool as dirty, wounded and rattled, as if snatching her bits of wisdom from the thin air she jabs with a bony finger. If the king is looking to this Fool for guidance, it’s clear he’s not all there, which Williamson sums up winningly early on.

“I had rather be any kind o’ thing than a Fool. And yet I would not be thee, nuncle.

Thou hast pared thy wit o’ both sides and left nothing i’ th’ middle.”

There’s Zack Fine as the loyal Kent, a servant who suffers banishment but cannot stay long away from his king. Fine’s expressive face clocks everything. He’s a witness to madness, powerless to fix it, like a man trying to move the furniture out of the way to keep Lear from hurting himself in a fit of rage. His heart tells him to look away, but his duty won’t permit it.

Howard W. Overshown’s Gloucester is measured, until he’s not, and his fall is heartbreaking. As Edgar, his disowned son, Eric Berryman disguises himself as the mad Poor Tom and only rarely pulls back the curtain to reveal the method in his madness. Keshav Moodliar’s scheming Edmund is a charming villain, beguiling the elder daughters and spinning a web of deceit and treachery.

Hudson Valley Shakespeare’s 39th season is a milestone, the first in the Samuel H. Scripps Theater Center, its spectacular new home on gifted land that was once a golf course.

The open-air pavilion echoes the surrounding hills and frames a north-facing view of Breakneck Ridge, Storm King Mountain and the Hudson Highlands. The picnicking grounds are ample and mirror the company’s longtime home at Boscobel. Gone is the temporary tent and its sandy playing surface, replaced by a wood floor with a balcony and massive A-frame construction that suggests year 39 is just the start of many, many seasons of Shakespeare to come.

The Scripps has that new-theater smell of wood, and seats that are anchored and comfortable, with fantastic sight lines.

Card-only concessions are not extensive, but there are dining options on-site and picnics may be ordered and picked up. The guest services area can stow blankets, baskets and chairs to be retrieved after the performance. The restrooms are clean, permanent and nearby. There is a shuttle that runs between the venue and the nearby Metro-North train station.

Last night’s performance of “King Lear” included an unremarked-upon visit from Hudson Valley Shakespeare co-founders Melissa Stern and Terry O’Brien, who launched Hudson Valley Shakespeare festival at nearby Manitoga in the fall of 1987.

They told me they could never have imagined, all those years ago, that one day they’d be sitting in a permanent theater that cost millions to build.

But Stern said the sprawling new campus is in keeping with the spirit of that original production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and the festival that took root at Boscobel the following year. They huddled with the actors after the performance.

McCallum closes his “Lear” by gathering the ghosts of those who perished in the tale. They fairly fill the ample lawn, illuminated and illuminating. Soon enough, Lear and his youngest daughter take their place among that company and they all turn their backs on the audience, taking in the view of the Hudson Highlands.

They then turn halfway back, freezing us in their gaze, as if to remind us to remember what we’ve seen.

Message received.