Last week I was jammy enough to be invited to a gala performance of Sir Ian McKellen’s new one-man show ‘Shakespeare, Tolkien, Others & You’, which had premiered at Finsbury’s Park Theatre a few days previously.
Sir Ian had put on a week of exclusive charitable performances of this play to raise funds for the plucky little North London theatre venue, which receives no public subsidy for its costs.
The show was a tour-de-force ride through the myriad plays and films he has graced over the course of his fifty-year career, encompassing Shakespeare’s tragic heroes Romeo and Macbeth through pantomime-era Widow Twanky and, most anticipatedly, his iconic outing as wizard Gandalf in Lord of the Rings, which he acted out with particular gusto early on in the performance, also inviting onto the stage a lucky spectator to try on his pointy wizard hat and sword for an onstage selfie to dine out on for decades to come.
Sir Ian had put on a week of exclusive charitable performances of this play to raise funds for the plucky little North London theatre venue, which receives no public subsidy for its costs.
The show was a tour-de-force ride through the myriad plays and films he has graced over the course of his fifty-year career, encompassing Shakespeare’s tragic heroes Romeo and Macbeth through pantomime-era Widow Twanky and, most anticipatedly, his iconic outing as wizard Gandalf in Lord of the Rings, which he acted out with particular gusto early on in the performance, also inviting onto the stage a lucky spectator to try on his pointy wizard hat and sword for an onstage selfie to dine out on for decades to come.
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