McKellen shows that theatre's spirit is thriving

The actor’s latest project is just the kind of innovation we're celebrating this weekend at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards

- Nancy Durrant

ASTONISHING Ian McKellen news this week, as it was announced that the knight of the realm and undisputed prince of the stage is to embark on yet another Iconic Shakespeare Role, Sir John Falstaff.

It's not clear how the lithe 84-year-old actor will portray the famously rotund soldier (God preserve us from fat suits), but I'm agog to find out. Hamlet, Lear, Prospero, lago, Macbeth et al are all well and good but it's going to be nice to see McKellen really flap his comic chops in a doublet and hose (rather than a frock and tights, in his beloved panto).

The actor has, he said, "resisted offers to play John Falstaff" in the past, but this "ingenious adaptation was irresistible". The version in question is a trimmed down tapestry woven together from Henry IV parts one and two, by director and adapter-extraordinaire Robert Icke, called Player Kings. I have great hopes that it will cherry pick all the good bits of Falstaff while removing most of the interminable, arcane pub scenes which were clearly only included so that Shakespeare's bigname comic actor Will Kempe could stay on stage to encourage jollity and the buying of oranges.

MARC BRENNER, MANUEL HARLAN Anyway, it's a thrilling prospect. McKellen is, well, McKellen, and Icke's work, from The Doctor (which recently played in New York after two successful London runs and starred Juliet Stevenson) to his Hamlet with Andrew Scott or his incredible adaptation of the Oresteia - one of the most captivating shows I've seen - is always utterly fascinating.

And in the week of the Evening Standard Theatre Awards, of which McKellen is a co-host and which take place on Sunday at Claridge's, it occurs to me that the whole enterprise is emblematic of the resilience and experimentation that characterises London theatre and which is exemplified in the shortlist.