No Holds Bard

IAN MCKELLEN won a Tony Award for his portrayal of Salieri in Amadeus but is best-known in his native England as one in a four-centuries-long succession of Shakespearean actors that includes Richard Burbage (the first Hamlet, Macbeth and Othello), Sir John Gielgud and Paul Scofield. The players constitute something of a royal house--or at least are knighted pretty often.

Ian McKellen Acting Shakespeare

At the Charles Playhouse

Through October 4

Sir Laurence Olivier, perhaps the most famous of the group, once lifted a speech from Richard III for his filmed version of Henry VI Part 3. As McKellen tells it, Sir Larry "certainly knows a good speech when he sees one." And so does McKellen.

In his engaging one-man show, Acting Shakespeare, at the Charles Playhouse for the next three weeks, the actor performs soliloquies of some 20 characters, from Macbeth to Sir John Falstaff to Juliet Capulet. With parts from The Tempest, a romance, and several history plays, McKellen covers all the theatrical bases from tragedy to low comedy. He even throws in Sonnet XX, for poetic justice.

But Acting Shakespeare isn't merely a showcase for "Great Moments in Shakespearean Drama (That Don't Make Sense Out of Context)". McKellen provides witty synopses and quick discourses on the parts he plays. They give the audience both a sense of progression through an evening of theater and some insight into the dramatist's craft.

MCKELLEN bounds back and forth across the stage as he moves through his repetoire. Less convincing in the younger parts--Hamlet and Romeo for instance--McKellen nonetheless instills all the speeches with enthusiasm and conveys a love for each one's poetry.

Unfortunately the enthusiasm occasionally distorts Shakespeare's work, focusing attention too strongly on the actor and showcasing an ego that would be more attractive if left wrapped in a character. Except for a single chair, there's nothing and no one onstage to upstage McKellen. Of this he takes maximum advantage.

McKellen is most charming when he tries, with noteable success, to establish an informal relationship with the audience. He has a seemingly endless supply of lively anecdotes, touching on the life of the Bard, the knotty question of updated Shakespearean productions and moments in his own 25-year career.

Perhaps the most enjoyable bits of Shakespearean lore center on critical judgments made by G.B. Shaw and Samuel Pepys. He also possesses a great gift for evoking the hustle and bustle of Shakespeare's London and the Globe Theatre.

MCKELLEN may be full of himself, full of more than the thespian's usually large share of bravado, but he is also full of Shakespeare and good humor. One of the highlights of the show comes when McKellen challenges the audience to find a single happy marriage in Shakespeare's canon--and shoots down every suggestion--from Othello and Desdemona to Brutus and Portia--with a few witty retorts. "Romeo and Juliet?" McKellen muses, "Short and sweet."

For the most part avoiding blind reverence, McKellen can't suppress a few instances of sickly sweet piety. As he takes one of his final departures from the stage, McKellen evidently can't resist the temptation to cast a wistful glance toward "Shakespeare's grave," the floorboards at the back of the stage which McKellen lovingly dusts at the beginning of the evening.

His self-depracatory moments, however, are quite successful. At one point he quotes the opening line of a less-than-flattering review. "The best part of Ian McKellen's Hamlet," the actor relates, "is his curtain call."

The same, there is no question, cannot be said of the current production at the Charles Playhouse.