Ian McKellen, 1998
Greg Gorman
"On returning to the Royal National Theatre, I had been
keen to be one of the actors in Trevor Nunn's new company but they were not scheduled to
rehearse until late 1998. I was impatient because I wanted to leave 1999 free for possible
filmwork, which a further season at the NT would impede.
So I asked Jude Kelly, artistic director of the West Yorkshire Playhouse if
she could quickly assemble a company to mount three plays in early autumn. She agreed that
I could be free by the end of February 1999 and together we chose the plays. I began
wanting to play Dr. Dorn in Chekov's "The
Seagull" and dame in a Christmas pantomime. Kelly was insistent that I should
play 2 leading roles. In the end we picked two masterly plays about theatre-life, "The
Seagull" was to be followed by Noël Coward's "Present
Laughter." Both offered a range of good parts for all the actors. Instead of
dame, I settled for Prospero in "The Tempest."
— Ian McKellen, October 1999
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West Yorkshire Playhouse Interior
"I was excited by the plays and the 12 actors whom Kelly cast to
present them. It would be a return to my personal and professional roots, working in a
regional repertory theatre in the north of England. I was attracted too by the contrast
between the homogenious audience that a local theatre attracts, compared with the
disparate groupings who patronise London theatres, including the NT. All this I reported
to a press conference held at the Criterion Theatre for the national media in September
1998.
"Afterwards, I elaborated to the arts correspondent of The Independent
newspaper. During the interview I observed that the NT's appeal to the general populace
was uncertain - the previous night at Trevor Nunn's new production of 'Oklahoma'
for instance the entire audience was white-skinned. In parting I was asked when I expected
to be back on the London stage - I smiled: 'Who knows? I may never work here again.'
"These remarks were translated by an over-enthusiastic sub-editor into
'McKellen May Never Act in London Again' and illustrated by selective comments
that ignored my real motives for working in Leeds and caricatured them as a
dissatisfaction with the mono-racial audiences I had played to at the NT. I didn't think
this worth correcting, although The Independent offered me space for an article.
"I didn't anticipate the subsequent fuss, public and private, from
friends and others who thought I was emigrating to Yorkshire in some sort of sulk. The
most amusing of the mistaken reactions was Peter Hall's when he said I was a cunning
manipulator of the press and would undoubtedly not act in London again until, of course I
decided to do so! But he was right that the publicity had an impression on the WYP
box-office where all 3 plays rapidly sold out.
"All the excitable comments from the London-centric media boiled down
to a familiar metropolitan arrogance. Anyone working outside does so because either he
can't get work in London or he hates London. Neither of these was true in my case."
— Ian McKellen, October 1999 |
