Magical McKellen delivers a one man shot of intravenous camp
ON face value, two hours of an actor telling you about plays they’ve been in sounds like fresh hell. Or maybe even stale hell.
Performers, especially the current crop, aren’t God’s gift to anecdote. There’s a reason they’re handed things to say.
Sir Ian McKellen, however, is a raconteur from the age of Peter Ustinov and Kenneth Williams.
He can carry a crowd, slap us with a punchline, and take nimble joy getting us there: it’s intravenous camp. In this one-man effort – a ‘birthday present to myself’ on the occasion of his 80th – he quite literally has a trunk of stories: a vast thing covered in stickers, one for each theatre in the UK where he’s taken his outrageously enjoyable, rude, touching and hilarious show. It’s a mix of anecdote, speech, reminiscence and audience-based quiz. Blimey, this crowd were up for interaction. ‘CORIOLANUS!!’ an elderly voice screeched behind me.
The assembly of disciples made noises I’ve never heard in a theatre before.
From his mound, McKellen would ( mid- tale) invoke the names of other national treasures, past and present: Dench, Finney, Thorndike, Gielgud.
Each was received with a warm purr of recognition; something between an ‘ooh’ and an ‘ahh’.
It’s undoubtedly a show for theatre people. Literature’s biggest drama queen, Hamlet, is ‘one of us’, McKellen insists, with a smile, before giving us ‘the play’s the thing’ speech. But as Gus the Theatre Cat (who he’s playing in Tom Hooper’s upcoming Cats film) he paws his ears and grumbles: ‘Now, these kittens, they do not get trained as we did in the days when Victoria reigned.’
We get chunky, full-throttled renditions of theatrical greats, but with the extra treat of his unique, slurry, rumbling voice.
His fiendishly rude edge is revealed, too; how he lusted after the young soldiers at Buckingham Palace, in their white trousers, as he went to collect his knighthood.
This was expected; the tales of regional rep, the cheeky digs at Kenneth Branagh (‘ he’s everywhere!’). But the touching moments of reflection surprised me.
In an admission of his own frailty, his mourning over many departed friends is beautifully marked with a devastating slice of Cymbeline: ‘Golden lads and girls all must, As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.’
The tale of his coming out, in his late 40s, reduced the giddy, rustling crowd to silence.
The inclusive warmth of this production is its joy; and its nimble, elderly host, the perfect champion.