Acclaimed actor Sir Ian McKellen gets audience members to act as French soldiers during his theatre performance 'Ian McKellen On Stage With Shakespeare, Tolkien and You.'
Sir Ian McKellen has always loved theatres. They helped him start a career that has spanned more than 50 years.
They nurtured a young talent from the days where he played walk-on roles as one of a myriad of Shakespearean messengers to the days where he sold out West End shows playing the Bard's leading tragic characters.
Even now, when he is more recognised and known for playing a magical bearded wizard who roams the plains of Middle Earth, Sir Ian still comes back to the theatre.
"I love theatres because strangers come together and have their lives changed, hopefully," he said.
Such strangers gathered into Auckland's Q Theatre yesterday to hear a style of show that Sir Ian has never performed before. It is a style of show that few actors, living or dead, could get away with. It is a personal journey through his career - from the things he loves to the roles he cherishes to the songs, poems, soliloquies he adores. All the way from Khazad Doom and the mines of Moria to the phrase that now echoes through pop culture: "You shall not pass!"
"It's a one-person show so there is nothing else but me," he said. "We don't have the resources for any scenery or effects. It's just me and the audience."
It is also a show that only New Zealanders will have the privilege to see. He is performing at 11 theatres across the country plying his trade, bucket in hand, for a worthy cause.
People have asked Sir Ian, who has been in New Zealand off and on for the last decade, whether his new one-man show, Ian McKellen On Stage with Shakespeare, Tolkien and You, will be touring to London.
"I say no, this is nothing to do with London, this is to do with New Zealand. This is a one off."
The reason dates back to several years ago when Sir Ian was acting on stage of the Isaac Royal Theatre in Christchurch in Samuel Beckett's Waiting For Godot.
"I was struck by how well it had been preserved," he said. "If it had not been, it wouldn't be still standing now."
A couple of weeks ago he was allowed into the red zone. It was, he told the audience, akin to walking onto the set of some terrible disaster movie where the film crew and actors were yet to arrive.
"It was quite bewildering."
All the proceeds from the shows go toward giving the Isaac Royal the facelift it needs to be reborn. Sir Ian said if enough money was raised, work could start within the year.
"That a theatre could be a symbol of the old looking forward to the new, for me, is very appropriate."
He wanted to devise a show that both he and the audience could enjoy. So what better way than to open it up to those strangers to ask him questions about his career, ask him to act out favourite roles or divulge the only time he has ever bombed on stage. At 73, Sir Ian said this style, more than at any other time in his career, felt right.
"It makes a change from filming where it is just you and the camera. But here it's me and people asking me questions wanting to find out stuff about me, which I'm happy to reveal and do a bit of acting in between times."
The result is a blended treat.
Tickets are still available for show in Hastings and Wanaka, and extra seats have been added in Wellington.
- © Fairfax NZ News
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