It is already returns only for one of the hottest theatrical performances of the year.

This month Sir Ian McKellen arrives on the London stage in the West End transfer of his debut as King Lear.

The Royal Shakespeare Company production, directed by his friend since university days, Sir Trevor Nunn, opened in Stratford-upon-Avon in the spring.

The critics had to wait weeks to pass their verdict after McKellen's co-star Frances Barber - who plays Goneril - fell off a bicycle and it was decided press night must await her recovery.

But what they had to say mattered little anway. The run sold out and after an international tour to Singapore, Australia, New Zealand and America, it is opening in London with only returns and day seats for 16- to 25-year-olds now available.

Desperate McKellen fans may have to console themselves with one of the few remaining tickets for his performances as Sorin in Chekhov's The Seagull, a role he shares with William Gaunt.

As the team worked on technical rehearsals at the New London Theatre last night, Sir Ian suggested Lear had been the experience of a lifetime.

"I've enjoyed every single night. There hasn't been one night I haven't loved doing it," the 68-year-old said. "It's a big responsibility and I get nervous but I don't mind getting nervous." Sharing Sorin with Gaunt had been fascinating, he added. "It's very illuminating to watch an actor rehearsing a part you know. You can see it from the outside. That's been a thrill."

He admitted the international tour had "not been easy because each theatre has been different and most of them have problems. But to come back home, to London, and have this waiting for us ..." He gestured to the thrust stage which brings the cast out to the audience. "Look at it, it's an absolute thrill. This it the most absolutely sensational theatre I've ever looked at."

Nunn, 67, said it was strange to be returning to the venue where he had directed the long-running hit musical Cats. "It does feel odd because it was a home of mine for close on 22 years."

Trevor Nunn and Ian McKellen met as students at Cambridge half a century ago. "It took Trevor a while to realise that his fortunes were more in directing than acting," McKellen teased. King Lear and The Seagull open on 28 November and continue in repertory until January. The RSC is presenting other work in London at the Soho Theatre, the Tricycle and the Roundhouse in coming months.

An equally starry - though also sold-out - Shakespearean production opens at the Donmar next month where Ewan McGregor stars as Iago to Chiwetel Ejiofor's Othello.

WHAT CRITICS SAID

"Ian McKellen is a majestic, moving Lear and Trevor Nunn's production, while nothing like as radical as Brook's or Hytner's, is largely satisfying." Michael Billington, The Guardian

"It is one of the most lucid, powerful and moving productions of this great tragedy I have ever seen, with McKellen's magnificent Lear destined to be remembered for far more than the moment when the old wizard flashes his impressive wand during a brief - and entirely justified - scene of nudity during the storm." Charles Spencer, Daily Telegraph

The RSC's King Lear "allowed Ian McKellen to bring depth, openness and emotional, spiritual and, at times, literal nakedness to the title role he has waited all his life to play".
Benedict Nightingale, The Times

"McKellen gives a performance of great technical resource, full of those unpredictable shifts of tack and gear that betoken cracked wits and incipient senility ... Yet often the detail comes over as fussy and unfelt." Paul Taylor, The Independent

"Sir Ian's performance as the octogenarian monarch who falls from glory to the lowest depths of despair kept me on constant, nervy tenterhooks, even if it too rarely moved me." Nicholas de Jongh, Evening Standard