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Lord of the Stage: An Interview with Ian McKellen
By Alexander BisleyImage by Catherine Bisley
“IT’S HAPPENING just for us, like an old story retold,” Ian McKellen explains the power of theatre over film to me. The number one reason to see the RSC’s productions of King Lear and The Seagull is McKellen. As Lear and Sorin, he delivers hilarious, majestic and moving moments. In person, as on stage and screen, McKellen mixes geniality with gravitas. Sporting a Maori greenstone, he is reflective and sometimes enigmatic.
“Where does one go after King Lear?” I ask him. He pauses dramatically. “That sounds like a philosophical question,” before enthusing about having a good break. Lear, he says, is about “important matters of life and death...how to love people.”
“I’m generally an optimistic person,” McKellen is hopeful a Peter Jackson directed film of The Hobbit will happen. He tempers his optimism with a belief that the world is a stage of fools.
“Is there any cause in nature that makes these hard hearts?” Lear exclaims. McKellen has a killer anecdote about performing to an insane asylum alongside Brian Cox’s Lear. He talks fondly about Nick Cuthell’s paintings, the Zen of Gervais (but adds he wouldn’t do a series with Ricky) and fuller biography via McKellen.com.
He muses on fans: “The Japanese are the most enthusiastic...I’ve been to a couple of conventions and I won’t be doing that again. They’re overwhelming.”
ALEXANDER BISLEY’s interview with Ian McKellen can be heard [here] (16 min, MP3, 6.4 MB). At the end he passionately recites a Lear line to note: “I’ve taken too little care of this.”
