Word: mckellen
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...seven hours to stage, he destroyed his manuscript. Another copy, found after his death, has given rise to several adaptations. Frayn's, which lasts 2 1/2 hours, shifts the focus from the leading lady to a man, the schoolteacher Platonov, and provides a wondrous star turn for Ian McKellen, who won a 1981 Tony Award for his portrayal of Salieri in Amadeus...
...beau ideal of a dusty country town, McKellen is all boisterous affection and puckish candor. From the moment he capers onto the stage, he seems infinitely more alive than everyone around him. No matter how thwarted or downcast, he never loses his vision of life as adventure rather than mere existence. But as his admirers gradually realize, the very boyish traits that make Platonov so appealing also render him irresponsible: unlike the safe and predictable dullards around him, he has simply never grown up. In the funniest yet most poignant scene, he feverishly debates whether to stay faithful...
...high point of the festival was the only U.S. engagement this year for the National Theater subcompany, led by Edward Petherbridge, twice a Tony nominee for roles in Nicholas Nickleby and Strange Interlude, and Ian McKellen, a Tony winner for his portrayal of the jealous composer Salieri in Amadeus. Each production in Chicago has showcased the two principals and three comparably talented colleagues, Greg Hicks, Eleanor Bron and Jonathan Hyde. The stand opened with The Duchess of Malfi in a faithfully Grand Guignol rendition of Webster's Jacobean tragedy. Actors clad in funereal black moved menacingly amid the stately...
...bill about bad theater and worse reviewers: Tom Stoppard's staging of his own The Real Inspector Hound, followed by Sheridan's dizzying spoof of epic tragedy, The Critic, last seen on Broadway 40 years ago in a production that featured Laurence Olivier and Ralph Richardson in roles that McKellen and Petherbridge play. Hound is a schoolboy-clever send-up of Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap, with all its clunking contrivances, coupled with the petulant fantasies of a second-string critic (Petherbridge) about an uprising by all the world's also-rans. Delightful all the way, it is nonetheless utterly...
...McKellen, giving perhaps the best performance of his career, is Mr. Puff, a hyperkinetic and vaguely Celtic specialist in panegyric, which is to say, a forerunner of the modern public relations man. From touting others, he has turned to writing his own epic tragedy, The Spanish Armada. At a rehearsal, everything goes wrong. The actors drop whole swatches of dialogue as turgid and unplayable. The bit players upstage the leads, who swat them. A sword fight is a model of slapstick ineptitude. A Minister of State (Petherbridge) comes out, stares at the audience long and balefully, and departs...