Street Roots • Feb. 19-25, 2016
News
Page 10
Ian McKellen, meet the Bard
The actor reflects on some
of Shakespeare's greatest lines,
written 400 years ago, and
their relevance today
BY STEVEN MACKENZIE
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
PROLOGUE
CELEBRATING
SHAKESPEARE
The British Film
Institute’s
Shakespeare on
Film will include
events and film
screenings
marking 400 years
since
Shakespeare’s
death. The
program will
include an
international tour ot
Shakespeare tiims
and a “Richard III”
simulcast in April,
featuring a live
discussion hosted
by Ian McKellen.
Visit bfi.org.uk/
shakespeare-
film-0.
Closer to home
The Oregon
Shakespeare
Festival in Ashland
is one of the oldest
and largest
professional
nonprofit theaters
in the nation. The
2016 season
opens Feb. 26.
Visit osfashland.
org.
Z^ Z"^ hakespeare is more than just
plays in the theater,” Sir Ian
McKellen said. “I’ve got a little
collection of Shakespeare figurines at home.
That’s Shakespeare to me. A walk along the
Avon is Shakespeare to me. A pub with his
name on the sign. Shakespeare is a hydra
headed brand ... which I hope you’ll quote.
I’m rather pleased with that”
McKellen is at the launch of the British
Film Institute’s Shakespeare on Film
season, timed to celebrate 400 years of the
Bard’s work (which is a nice way of saying
that he died 400 years ago). Although
associated most with the stage - obviously -
no writer has more film credits. The
Internet Movie Database, or IMDb, lists
1,120 titles based on Shakespeare’s work.
Among the series of events and films being
screened, the undisputed highlight of the
BFI’s Bard season will be a bus tour of
London locations - including Battersea
Power Station and Tate Modern, both used
in the 1995 film adaptation of “Richard III,”
which its star, Sir Ian McKellen, will host.
Aside from his new job as a tour guide,
McKellen is one of the world’s best-loved
actors, adored for playing Gandalf in “The
Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings,” and
reveling in the role of a malevolent Magneto
in the “X-Men” franchise.
He is no stranger to the small screen
either, having had an extended stint in
Coronation Street and camping it up
savagely alongside Derek Jacobi in the
sitcom “Vicious.”
But it is on stage where McKellen
belongs, and the words of the Bard he was
born to speak. So when he sits down with
Street Roots’ sister paper The Big Issue
U.K., wearing an immaculate three-piece
suit and tartan tie (which if I’m not
mistaken is the colors of the Clan Macbeth),
we decide to ask him some of the questions
Shakespeare posed in his plays that still
resonate today.
Dramatis personae: In the following, The
Big Issue’s Steven MacKenzie will be
standing in for Shakespeare. Ian McKellen
plays himself.
"
is now. Not tomorrow. Not yesterday. Now.
If you trust Shakespeare and if you’ve got
good actors and a good director, it will seem
now. Even if it’s set in the past, the
preoccupations and the characters will seem
to be still alive and still relevant As for
winter of our discontent, that was used as a
constant headline in the not too distant
past. Somewhere in the world it is a winter
of discontent.
film, but it’s also real as well. In the 1930s,
our royal family might have sided with the
fascists.
W.S.: The 1995film adaptation you
co-wrote and starred in was set in a fascist
version of Britain in the 1930s. That was not
now...
I.M.: It’s not the language that’s
complicated. If you’ve got good acting
practitioners, they’ll make you understand
it. There is nothing in the opening speech
of “Richard III” that a 10-year-old can’t
understand.
And I suspect when people say, “Oh, I
don’t understand Shakespeare,” it’s because
they’ve been exposed to an actor who
wasn’t very good. Or they tried to read it
themselves. I don’t think a child should any
more read Shakespeare than they should
ACT 1 SCENE 1
William Shakespeare: The opening line
of “Richard III” is, “Now is the winter of our
discontent. ” Is now still a winter of discontent?
Is it always?
Ian McKellen: What I like about that
first line is the first word, now. Shakespeare
+ '
British actor Ian McKellen has performed Shakespeare both on film and on stage.
I.M.: Shakespeare was writing about
relatively recent events but using them to
create his own story, so it seemed a good
modern equivalent
We’re all aware that there was not that
sort of king in the 1930s - just as there
wasn’t actually that sort of king in the actual
period. There’s an air of fantasy about the
ACT 1 SCENE 2
W.S.: Also in “Richard III” is the line, “An
honest tale speeds best, being plainly told,” but
Shakespeare’s work isn’t always known for its
simplicity.
See McKELLEN, page 11
BFI NATIONAL ARCHIVE