Petty tyrants don’t get much pettier than Lucky, the posturing interloper who shows up midway through “Waiting for Godot.” But Alvin Epstein, the living treasure who created that role in the American premiere of “Godot” 50 years ago, has brought New York a surprising contender for that ignoble title: King Lear.

Lear may “hath ever but slenderly known himself,” as his traitorous daughter Regan claims, but New York audiences are getting to know him pretty well of late – courtesy of Christopher Plummer in 2004 and Andre DeShields (and possibly Kevin Kline) later this season. Still, none of these terrific actors is likely to match Mr. Epstein’s ravaged take on the doomed patriarch. His performance is by far the most compelling reason to see the Actors’ Shakespeare Project’s intelligent – if slightly overstuffed – production, but it’s hardly the only one.

This Boston-based company specializes in no-frills, tactile productions of Shakespeare, and director Patrick Swanson elicits from his 14-member cast a production short on pageantry and long on sharp, dirt-under-the-fingernails interpretations.

(According to the program, Cherry Jones, Mandy Patinkin, and Debra Winger were among the several dozen donors and “supporters” needed to bring this “Lear” to New York. When a critically hailed, low-budget production needs this much aid to finagle a three-week run in an off-off-Broadway space, something has gone wrong.)

Mr. Swanson has made a wise cut here, a clever shading on one of the play’s many plot twists. And he has clearly placed a premium on making the action clear to the audience, which sits on all four sides of the action. (The cavernous La MaMa Annex space, which can sometimes feel unwieldy, has been penned in to create a welcome intimacy.)

He has also found the rare actor who has reached Lear’s stated age of “fourscore and upward” and is still up to the absurdly demanding role. (Mr. Epstein, who played the Fool to Orson Welles’s Lear half a century ago, just barely squeaks by on the former requirement.) Mr. Epstein’s Lear starts out as spry and playful, giving his beloved Cordelia (Sarah Newhouse) a playful tap on the chin just minutes before making his ruinous decision to disown her.

This mercurial tendency sprouts up again and again, making Mr. Epstein’s Lear an unpredictable and dangerous ruler. Mr. Swanson strains to make some of Regan’s and Goneril’s complaints valid – those 100 knights that Lear brings with him do look like a bit of a hassle – but the most damning trait is that capriciousness. “Thou shalt find / That I’ll resume the shape which thou dost think / I have cast off for ever,” Lear warns Goneril after receiving one indignity, and Mr. Epstein’s hair-trigger performance makes it clear that this father and king has cast off and resumed more than his share of shapes.

Lear’s mental and physical decline throughout is horrible to watch. His eyes take on both a feverish precision and a desperate gloss of incomprehension, and when Mr. Epstein staggers practically naked onto the stage near the end, it is as if every muscle in his diminutive body has somehow slackened. And yet his lofty, kingly mien still flares up from time to time, often at surprising moments. It is the kind of performance that can only come from decades of immersion in stage technique, and it is crushing to watch.

Unlike that recent Christopher Plummer production, which surrounded its capable star with a shockingly weak supporting cast, this staging boasts a top-to-bottom group of vocally confident, physically nimble, and unostentatious actors. (Credit for the physicality must go to Robert Walsh’s bristling fight choreography, as well as to Mr. Swanson’s direction.)

While these performances vary somewhat in quality, each one would be a credit to nearly any local Shakespeare production. Among the standouts are Colin Lane’s virile Gloucester and Paula Langton’s chastened Regan, while Allyn Burrows finds both the pathos and the humor – with the help of a ridiculous Inspector Clouseau mustache and accent – in the role of the king’s faithful compatriot Kent.

The early scenes promise a “Lear” for the ages, a promise that Mr. Swanson’s production can’t quite deliver on. Not every staging innovation pans out: Why kill the Fool (Ken Cheeseman) during the mock trial way back in Act III? He has given his comic actors far too much leeway, allowing large chunks of that same act to degenerate into a morass of rudderless bellowing. And the machinations among Lear’s various antagonists suffer from a similar lack of precision, bogging down his staging well before this production hits the three-hour mark.

Nonetheless, his batting average is quite high, and the shrewd physical production alone would make this “Lear” worth the trip. Toss in a revelatory performance by one of American theater’s giants, visible from an irresistibly close distance, and three and a half hours in the company of a raging despot suddenly seems like a great way to spend a summer evening.

Until July 2 (66 E. 4th Street, between Second Avenue and the Bowery, 212-445-7710).