Nobody’s Fool

Clips from a certain tabloid decorate the door and mirror of Emma Thompson’s dressing room at the Mark Taper Forum where the actress, and the rest of Great Britain’s Renaissance Theater Company, is installed for the run of “King Lear” and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

The headlines refer to addictions and freak accidents and well, freaks--which is just what Thompson has created for her role as the Fool in “King Lear.”

Thompson plays the part in a squat, covered with soot and wearing a sack. It’s a tuberaceous Fool, no taller than E.T., who watches the decline of its other half, the King.

“My idea,” says Thompson, “was that this leper couple had left their baby at the door of the castle. . . . It’s brought up like a dog in the kitchen. . . . Lear appropriates it when it’s about 8 years old.”

In “Dream,” Thompson plays Helena, one of a pair of lovers whose lives are made mad by fairies, sprites and other creatures in the woods outside Athens.

“It’s just one of the funniest parts ever written for a woman,” says Thompson, “and it’s often played wrongly, wimpily, as though she’s got no fire. . . .”

Thompson, 30, is familiar to U.S. audiences for her work in the miniseries “Fortunes of War.” Last year she wrote and starred in “Thompson,” her own BBC series.

Thompson may be best known for her real-life role--she’s the bride of Kenneth Branagh. And in his recent film, “Henry V,” she plays Princess Katherine to his King Henry. Branagh, 29, directed and produced the film, as well as the plays, through RTC, which he founded a few years ago.

“It’s called Renaissance,” says Thompson of the company, “because it’s something sprouting out again anew, afresh. It’s an enormous explosion of passion. Practical passion, that’s a very good phrase to describe Ken’s driving force.”