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McKellen to make Beckett debut at 70
Louise Jury, Chief Arts Correspondent31 Oct 2008
SIR Ian McKellen will celebrate his 70th birthday by partnering Patrick Stewart in Samuel Beckett's Waiting For Godot.
The grand old men of British stage will take on the roles of tramps Estragon and Vladamir in a new production. It will open at the Theatre Royal Haymarket in May for a strictly-limited two-month season.
The production will mark McKellen's debut in Beckett despite a long track record on the stage.
He first worked with Stewart, who is a year his junior, in 1977 when they appeared in Tom Stoppard's Every Good Boy Deserves Favour for the Royal Shakespeare Company. Both men went on to become Shakespearean stalwarts. McKellen most recently appeared as King Lear and Stewart is now working alongside David Tennant in Hamlet as well as starring as Macbeth.
But their appearance in Godot could draw new audiences to the challenging Irish playwright thanks to their big screen fame. McKellen played Gandalf in Lord Of The Rings while Stewart was long known as Star Trek's Jean-Luc Picard.
They will be directed by Sean Matthias who has previously worked with McKellen on Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya. The production will be part of a new season at the Theatre Royal Haymarket whose management is experimenting with having an artistic director for an entire season.
Despite mixed success for the first season under Jonathan Kent, which ended in the early closure of musical Marguerite, the star casting is a giant boost to the initiative.
The theatre will also make Waiting For Godot its first production to tour. The show will be seen at venues from Brighton to Edinburgh before the West End run. In London, a number of top price tickets will be available at £10 each on the day of performances.
