The Daily Telegraph - Features
Ian McKellen stirs the soul in this elegiac four-hour epic
Player Kings Noël Coward Theatre, London WC2
At 84, there’s clearly life yet in the acting titan that is Ian McKellen (and long may it be). Even so, an unmistakable aura of elegy and mortality hangs over his largely delightful and affecting turn as old Jack Falstaff.
There’s a poignancy about his undertaking the two parts of Henry IV for director Robert Icke, who has merged them under the title Player Kings. McKellen made his mark as a Cambridge student playing doddery justice Shallow in Part 1. A lifetime later, the theatrical knight – sporting a fatsuit as Sir John – now sits with Robin Soans as gibbering Shallow in a Gloucestershire orchard, reminiscing about lusty youth with rheumy indulgence.
Though it can incline to the briskly efficient, Icke’s moderndress production is intelligent and beautifully bookended. First Richard Coyle’s grave and wan Henry IV receives the crown, orb and sceptre in a posture of monarchical authority; then, at the climax, Toheeb Jimoh’s Prince Hal performs the same ritual, assuming a silent steadfastness that speaks of crushing regal duties.
Charting Hal’s journey from playacting low-life wastrel to battle and throne-ready warrior, the two parts form a national epic of power-play, racing from tavern to court and field of conflict. It’s as propulsive – and as liberty-taking – as The Crown. McKellen’s old rogue can plunge from sackswilling, swaggering cheer to hangdog melancholy.
This sly, unsavoury gent isn’t hugely funny and yet is a physical comic force. But when he stoops on bended knee to plead against his banishment in the Part 1 “mock” royal summons, then stands frozen in disbelief at the crowning scene of actual rejection in Part 2 (“I know thee not, old man”), the effect is as heart-stopping for us as it is for him.
This account may not be one for the annals, but we surely exit eternally grateful that McKellen added the challenge to his bucket list; a must-witness.
In London until June 22, then touring until July 27; playerkingstheplay.co.uk
produced much of his finest work, including The Winslow Boy, The Browning Version and The Deep Blue Sea (my grandfather, the press photographer James Jarché, took a photo of him in the late 1940s, during his heyday). Set in the aftermath of a suicide attempt, that masterpiece illustrated his tortured genius, bound up with his sexuality and the repression of the era. He could pour the deepest pain into his writing, but cover it with a light English veneer. He was elbowed aside in the mid-1950s by the ‘kitchen sink’ revolution and after that, there was a sense of him feeling despondent about his reputation. When he died in 1977, he felt under-appreciated.
I believe his plays have a rare quality of music about them. There are the top notes, the middle notes and the lower, darker notes – but not all of those have been played to the full in the past. Increasingly, I think we are seeing productions that give the plays their full depth.
I helped to launch the Terence Rattigan Society and in 2017 was elected its president. It’s in this capacity today that I’ll be presiding over the dedication of the Rattigan family memorial.
The family tomb has returned to its original sparkling whiteness after painstaking work. Lucy Briers (daughter of Richard) couldn’t bear that a man of Rattigan’s talent was laid to rest with no name marking his resting-place. She formed a committee to launch a fund-raising project to renovate the memorial.
My desire to bring Rattigan further back into the spotlight doesn’t end here. I would love to see a theatre named after him. My favourite would be the Duchess, where a number of his plays were put on, including Man and Boy. We have the Noël Coward and the Harold Pinter – and Terence Rattigan is right up there with those two. I’m 77 now. Before I die, I would love to raise the curtain on “the Rattigan”.
‘I regard the role as one of the most disturbing I have ever played’