Ian McKellen
Demetrios Matheou
JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit has always been the answer to those who rail at the self-consciously epic scale and bombast of The Lord of the Rings; it is the perfect Tolkien primer, an introduction to Middle Earth that is humorous and boisterous, doesn’t take its heroes too seriously, moves along at a good clip and is no less a glorious adventure for its levity.It is also a modest single volume. How ironic, then, that director Peter Jackson should take that very lightness away from it, ignore the fact that it was written for children, and impose his own grandiose design. The hubris is mind- Read more ...
bella.todd
Halfway through Sean Mathias’s gripping new production of The Syndicate, Ian McKellen’s Don Antonio Barracano reaches for his hat, stick and gloves and heads out through the olive groves to "make [a man] an offer". He looks and sounds like a nice old gent setting out for an afternoon stroll. Unless, of course, you’re passingly acquainted with The Godfather.Set in the criminal underworld of Sixties Naples, Eduardo de Filippo’s dark-cornered comedy is a far, far better play than its performance history here in the UK (just one radio production with Paul Scofield) might have you believe. A Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
"The ultimate battle! Jesus versus Magneto!" raved one sci-fi blogger (ironically), on seeing that this Anglo-American remake of The Prisoner stars Jim The Passion of the Christ Caviezel and Sir Ian X-Men McKellen. If only. Unfortunately the new Prisoner's dominant characteristics are its sluggish tempo, limited vision and inability to drag itself out of the shadow of the Patrick McGoohan original.Critics were queueing up to dole out kickings to the new Prisoner even before the first episode, which seemed a trifle cruel. Even Private Eye's "Remote Controller" weighed in with a merciless pre- Read more ...
Matt Wolf
The wait is over. Less than six months after dramatic literature's defining tramps departed the West End, here are Vladimir (Didi) and Estragon (Gogo) back again, with some new faces to flesh out Beckett's eternal verities about that grievous but also grimly funny thing we call life. Roger Rees has joined Ian McKellen to make up a double-act whose vaudevillian tendencies intensify the more these two abject fellas face down the void. The truly startling news, though, is the added jolt afforded the evening by the arrival of Matthew Kelly as a seriously searing Pozzo: a capacious performance Read more ...