"Ian McKellen's solo show, 'Acting Shakespeare,' slayed them in Paris causing box-office pandemonium: it transferred from the Petit Odeon to the main-house for a Sunday-night performance that had the audience going wild. And rightly so since McKellen offers a dazzling mixture of anecdote, analysis and impersonation. His Mistress Quickly (describing the death of Falstaff) is the best I have seen; he switches from Polonius to Hamlet to the Player King at the drop of an inflection; and his phrase-by-phrase dissection of a speech of Macbeth's is Cambridge practical criticism at its best. He combines the wily charm of a stand-up comic with the Protean gifts of a great actor; and now that McKellen has single-handedly established a British presence in the Theatre De L'Europe, I hope some of our major companies follow him into the breach." — The Guardian
Comments and Reviews
"Ian McKellen's solo show, 'Acting Shakespeare,' slayed them in Paris causing box-office pandemonium: it transferred from the Petit Odeon to the main-house for a Sunday-night performance that had the audience going wild. And rightly so since McKellen offers a dazzling mixture of anecdote, analysis and impersonation. His Mistress Quickly (describing the death of Falstaff) is the best I have seen; he switches from Polonius to Hamlet to the Player King at the drop of an inflection; and his phrase-by-phrase dissection of a speech of Macbeth's is Cambridge practical criticism at its best. He combines the wily charm of a stand-up comic with the Protean gifts of a great actor; and now that McKellen has single-handedly established a British presence in the Theatre De L'Europe, I hope some of our major companies follow him into the breach." — The Guardian
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