![\"IanMcKellan-1-scaled\"](\"http:\/\/www.new.brucepress.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/IanMcKellan-1-scaled.jpg\" "\\"IanMcKellan-1-scaled\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\nSir Ian strode to the stage from the back of the theater, much as the President does for a state of the union, to rapturous applause and many, many smiles.\u00a0 As things calmed down, he began by saying that Shakespeare wrote 37 plays, could we recount them.\u00a0 People yelled from the audience the names of the plays, as he ticked them off\u00a0 McKellan would tell an anecdote of an experience or some comment on the characters of the play.\u00a0 Establishing a personal connection with the audience, Sir Ian assured that we would be right there with him as he proceeded through almost two hours of “something he’s trying for the first time”.<\/p>\n
There’s an expression I’m sure we’ve all heard, “He could read from the phone book and I would be enraptured”.\u00a0 Or something like that.<\/p>\n
In those two hours McKellan took us through his life by anecdote, poem, scene, jingle, children’s song, dirty limerick\u00a0 and even an entry from Roget’s Thesaurus.\u00a0 He engaged the audience with humor and pathos.\u00a0 We never thought we were incidental to what he was doing on stage, as you might for a play, we felt like this was very much a conversation even if it was a very one-sided conversation.<\/p>\n
[Did you know that McKellan is the last actor alive to have been the first to perform one of Shakespeare’s characters? \u00a0 The play, Sir Thomas Moore, was written by Anthony Munday but three pages of the single manuscript that survive are written in Shakespeare’s hand.\u00a0 So, he is credited with some part of it, at least.\u00a0 Since it was censored in Elizabethan times, it went unperformed until 1964 with Sir Ian in the title role.]<\/p>\n I’m trying to piece together all the individual pieces he performed like Sonnet 59 (which he performed as one side of an emotional telephone conversation which segued into the spoken lyrics of ‘Hard Days Night’, Hamlet Act 2 Scene 2.. I particularly enjoyed a poem written by his favorite poet which was meant to be part of a play.<\/p>\n At the end of the evening, he invited anyone in the audience who wished to join him on stage for a little acting exercise.\u00a0\u00a0 Being in the balcony, I hesistated, STUPID STUPID!! for by the time I made it down to the floor the ushers were turning people away.\u00a0 Each person clambering onto the stage was greeted by Sir Ian with a warm handshake and a smile.\u00a0 He gathered his group of new protege’s on stage with him at the center to give his instructions.\u00a0 The group spread out across the stage and as he began to speak, the players fell dead to the stage.<\/p>\n Each and every one of them could now state, quite truthfully, that they once performed on stage with the great Ian McKellan.<\/p>\n There is so much I would like to etch perfectly on the fabric of my mind, but that is not the way of things for me.\u00a0 I’ll carry away some pictures, and fragments will resurrect at times, but I’ll not be there again.\u00a0 This was an evening I’ll carry with me in my person, if not perfectly in memory then in feeling.<\/p>\n — William Shakespeare, (Julius Caesar)<\/p>\n The stage at Harman Hall in Washington, D.C. was graced by a towering presence last night (10\/29\/2009).\u00a0 Sir Ian McKellan performed a one man show to benefit the Shakespeare Theatre of Washington D.C. and it was brilliant. Sir Ian strode … Continue reading <\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>He, only, in a general honest thought
\nAnd common good to all, made one of them.
\nHis life was gentle, and the elements
\nSo mixed in him that Nature might stand up
\nAnd say to all the world, ‘This was a man!’<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"