Few actors have the grace and panache as Sir Ian McKellen; recently McKellen performed King Lear for the Royal Shakespeare Company of England, here are his thoughts on returning to the stage.

If you seem to have misplaced Sir Ian McKellen after his role as Gandolf in Lord Of The Rings, fear not, the dashing and eloquent performer recently wrapped up his performance in Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull. Just before Chekhov, Sir Ian McKellen was reveling in many actors dream of playing King Lear for the Royal Shakespeare Company of England. Few performers seem so suited for the title role of this Shakesperean tragedy as McKellen. Enjoy a Q&A with Sir Ian McKellen about his recent performances with the RSC.

Q&A with Ian McKellen who plays the title role in KING LEAR (part of the Complete Works Festival) and shares the role of Sorin in THE SEAGULL

King Lear by William Shakespeare, directed by Trevor NunnThe Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon24 March -21 June 2007 and then on tour.

Box Office: 0844 800 1110 or www.rsc.org.uk The Seagull by Anton Chekhov, directed by Trevor NunnThe Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon17 April -23 June 2007 and then on tour. www.rsc.org.uk

Your last RSC season was in 1989 in Othello. How do you feel returning to the company after so long?

My earliest appreciation of Shakespeare was nurtured by our school’s annual camp at Tiddington on the Avon upstream of Stratford in the 1950’s, queuing all night for tickets to see the season’s work. Olivier, Ashcroft, Laughton, Robeson were on the menu and I devoured their work, never dreaming I would be allowed to work on the same stage. By the time I arrived there 20 years later in Trevor Nunn’s company playing Romeo, Macbeth and Leontes, there was an ethos of a theatre company which I relished – and still do. That’s why I am so pleased that our Lear cast will also present The Seagull, 30 years after I produced the first small-scale tour for the RSC, when we did Twelfth Night with another Chekov play, Three Sisters. So it feels like coming home.

Do you feel there are any Shakespeare roles you have ‘missed out’ on or would like to play in the future?

I missed Benedick and Hotspur although I still half-hope I could play an ageing Mercutio surrounded by his younger mates.

What do you think of The Courtyard Theatre? What do you think the thrust stage does for the relationship with the actor to the audience?

So far I have only seen The Courtyard empty of actors but it is clearly a magnificent space for Shakespeare and it is exciting that its plan will eventually be placed within the structure of the old main house (Royal Shakespeare Theatre). There is a close proximity with every member of the audience, akin to the much smaller Other Place, where I’ve played Macbeth and Iago. It is fitting that our shows will tour to Minneapolis, where Tyrone Guthrie’s theatre has for years celebrated the open stage as the most fitting for Shakespeare.

Playing two productions (and roles) in repertoire – do you think this adds anything special to your experience or the audience’s?

The RSC has always presented its work in repertoire and as an audience and an actor, I know the thrill of seeing the same company playing in different plays on adjacent nights or best of all on the same day. I am relieved not to have to play Lear more than 4 times each week and pleased to be sharing Sorin with William Gaunt. I have already played Konstantin and Dr Dorn, just as in Lear I have played Edgar and Kent.

You will be returning to Newcastle-upon-Tyne as part of the show’s tour in its 30th anniversary year. How do you feel about that? What is your most abiding memory/highlight of your work up there?

I remember in the 1970s advising Trevor Nunn that the theatre enthusiasts in the north-east deserved to host the RSC away from home. This is the 30th anniversary of our first season there when I played in Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet. Whether our company will have the time and energy to present other work when we are in Newcastle, I don’t yet know – but hope so.

You mention on your website that you and Trevor Nunn were scholars together and also made your ‘RSC debuts’ in the open air ‘Dell’ by the river in Stratford in 1960. Can you tell us a bit about that?

Trevor and I acted in a number of undergraduate productions before he wisely turned to directing! He was one of the first of my friends to encourage me to act professionally. Many other of our Cambridge colleagues were aiming for a life in the theatre, for example, Derek Jacobi was with us for our open-air productions in the Bancroft Gardens in 1960.

Now you are back in the rehearsal room, is it a big culture shock after doing mostly film and television recently? What are the main differences in the disciplines?

Since Gandalf, Magneto and Leigh Teabing in The Da Vinci Code, I have played onstage in Dance of Death in New York, London and Sydney. More recently I was in Mark Ravenhill’s The Cut at the Donmar and on tour, as well as in pantomime at the Old Vic. So I haven’t been out of touch with live audiences.

You will be working with some familiar faces from the past in Stratford – John Barton and Cicely Berry – how have they influenced your work?

The legacy of Barton and Berry is safe in the hands of their successors at the RSC but it was a joy to join in one of John’s recent workshops and I’m looking forward to lying down once again in Cis’s room at Stratford, while she re-trains my breathing technique.

From your website you write in 1976 “if the RSC does not take the most demanding road, who will?” Do you think that the Complete Works Festival has been a good illustration of this?

I have seen only a handful of productions over the last year but envy locals who had the opportunity of seeing them all. I’m hoping Michael Boyd might revive the idea sometime soon. Might it be possible one day for the same actors to work their way through the canon in order, so that Shakespeare’s development can be experienced much as his audiences did 400 years ago. Lucky the actor who got to play Richard Burbage’s original parts in sequence!

What advice would you give to a young actor starting out in classical theatre roles?

One of the greatest joys of being an actor is sharing the stage with older and younger colleagues. When I was starting out, I loved watching and talking with my seniors. Now my role is reversed, it’s touching that the young actors in Lear and The Seagull are as keen as ever. As for advice – work with people you admire and go and see their work as much as you can.

You also say on your website “No wonder this company began to find its identity at the same time as it stopped calling itself ‘Memorial’” – how do you think the RSC (and theatre in general) can ensure that young audiences of the future are nurtured into enjoying and relating to Shakespeare?

Directors can do worse than devise their productions with a clarity which will engage a bright 14 year old rather than trying to titillate those who know the plays backwards. Then it is vital that there are always tickets cheap enough for a youngster to afford .

You are also returning to BAM and LA on this tour – on your last visit there you were producing Lear and Richard III – can you tell us what you are looking forward to on your return there?

Brooklyn Academy of Music has presented more astounding classic productions than Broadway even and it’s an honour we have been invited to play in the Harvey, which mirrors Peter Brook’s Bouffe du Nord in Paris, a thrilling space to act in. I was first at BAM with the Actors’ Company in 1974, playing Edgar to Robert Eddison’s Lear. Then I was Kent to Brian Cox’s king for the National Theatre in 1992. Now for the hat-trick.

You will be making a ‘homecoming’ on the tour’s leg to New Zealand as that is where Lord of The Rings was filmed. How do you think audiences there will react to seeing ‘Gandalf’ on stage?

I made few requests in planning the tour but one was that the RSC should return to the welcome of New Zealand, where I spent one of my happiest and most fulfilling years as an actor filming Lord of the Rings. The Fellowship in that cast were tattooed lest we ever forget. I wonder whether this company mightn’t all want to do the same when we are in Wellington and Auckland...

A thank you to the RSC for their gracious cooperation for this article.

To learn more about the RSC go to their website at: www.rsc.org.uk