How Was The Show - Ian McKellen at Guthrie Theater

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Global Voices presents: An evening with Ian McKellen in conversation with Joe Dowling at Guthrie Theater on 10/8/07

Ian McKellen (right) with Joe Dowling at the Guthrie - Photo by Daniel Schultz

As you’ve likely heard, because it’s kind of a big deal, Sir Ian McKellen is at the Guthrie Theater this month as the Royal Shakespeare Company performs Anton Chekov’s The Seagull and Shakespeare’s King Lear in repertory. Both plays are directed by Trevor Nunn.

All Minneapolis performances have sold out. Not surprising, as The Guthrie is one of only three venues on the U.S. tour. The tour's only other stops are New York and Los Angeles.

McKellen, already known as one of the leading actors of his generation in British theater, became an international star after playing Magneto in the X-Men movies and Gandalf in the Lord of The Rings Trilogy. No surprise then, that Monday’s Q&A session with McKellen also sold all 1,100 seats in the beautiful Wurtele Thrust Stage. The Guthrie provided overflow seating in the McGuire Proscenium where they presented a big-screen simulcast of the discussion.

I was lucky enough to be inside the Wurtle Thrust just after 7:00 PM when McKellen sat down with Guthrie Artistic Director Joe Dowling for a one-hour discussion, and 30 minutes of audience member queries – most introduced by laudatory remarks - from the audience.

All told, Sir Ian is an absolutely delightful interviewee and answered questions thoughtfully and with terrific humor. The session could have easily run an additional 30-60 minutes without tedium setting in.

Ian McKellen - Photo by Daniel Schultz

Some of Dowling's and McKellen’s discussion centered on how McKellen got his start in theater, and Sir Ian admitted that although he has become known as a Shakespearean actor, that was not necessarily the type of actor he had set out to be. He also remarked that these are times of great actresses, but no one seems to have emerged yet to take the place of great male figures like Gielgud, Guinness and Olivier. (To this, Dowling told McKellen he shouldn’t sell himself so short.) McKellen pointed to Dame Judi Dench and Dame Maggie Smith as two of today’s greatest living female actresses.

Since coming out in 1988, Ian McKellen has also been an outspoken advocate for gay rights. Monday night he shared the story about how he had been prompted make his homosexuality public by a controversial amendment in the UK (dubbed Section 28) discouraging certain education about homosexuality in the British school system because conservatives feared such education might be seen as promoting homosexuality. Despite McKellen’s work to to stop the amendment, it passed anyway and was not repealed until 2003. McKellen scoffed at the idea that homosexuality is something you can effectively promote, pointing out to laughter and applause that heterosexuality has been promoted to him his whole life and it hasn’t had the slightest impact.

As the last section of questions ended, McKellen asked for the Wurtele house speakers to be turned off – in lieu of disengaging his microphone entirely (which would have effectively ended the audio for people in the other room) – saying it was obscene to be mic’d in such an acoustically great room and performed a soliloquy to close out the evening. A standing ovation ended the Q&A just as it had started it when he walked on stage.