Lions in Winter

Here's a treat, though a long one.  Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart talk about important moments in their stage careers and their lives, as well as their feelings about their film/TV stardom.  It's a fascinating 90 minutes.

Here and Everywhere

Here on the North Coast, Sanctuary Stage has announced an ambitious upcoming season, which includes a 24 hour ten-minute play competition, Sam Shepard's A Lie of the Mind and their second Samuel Beckett Tribute. Right now, they're auditioning " Actors, Musicians, Dancers, Jugglers(Circus Artists)" on this coming Saturday, June 23 at 11 AM. Auditions will be held at the Eureka Theater 612 "F" Street. Additional information at http://www.sanctuarystage.com/ or call 786-9151.

The American Conservatory Theater (ACT) is coming to the end of celebrating its 40th year in San Francisco. It actually started in Pittsburgh in a theatre I know well (although I was away at college at the time.) ACT has also announced its upcoming season, which includes a different Sam Shepard play (Curse of the Starving Class, which I saw early in its life at the Public Theatre in New York), David Mamet's Speed the Plow, Gogol's The Government Inspector (directed by Carey Perloff, who is also doing John Ford's 'Tis A Pity She's a Whore), and Athol Fugard's Blood Knot.

The UK is buzzing about Ian McKellen's King Lear, in rep with Chekhov's The Seagull, also starring McKellen. They started in Stratford and will transfer to London in the fall. It occurs that there isn't a strong contemporary movie version of Lear out there (though Patrick Stewart told the story without Shakespeare's words in his transplanted TV movie, King of Texas). McKellen successfully took his Richard III to the big screen. From the reviews it sounds as if this is a lavish production, so...maybe?

Finally, Elizabeth Fuller (who responds to my post on Dream Houses in the comments) sent along a link to the New York Times review of Behind the Lid, a production by the performance artist Lee Nagrin, who died on June 7 at age 78. She was (Ben Brantley writes)" a staple of downtown Bohemia for more than half a century, belonged to a tribe now all but extinct in Manhattan, for whom theater was truly a religion, a means of pursuing the ineffable." His review ends:

The visual effects — from that simulated atomic blast to the apparition of a giant talking totem pole — are riveting throughout, psyche- roiling combinations of a childlike primitivism and an uberartisan’s sophistication. Similarly, the entire enterprise can seem silly, frightening, pretentious, sincere and magnificent, all at the same time.

Rather like the great experiment that was avant-garde theater in New York for the second half of the 20th century. “Behind the Lid” is an evocation not only of Ms. Nagrin but also of an entire theatrical subculture that now has only a flickering existence.

In a prologue, Ms. Nagrin’s voice speaks of the artist as a “pearl diver” descending into “the depths of the past” and transforming what she finds there into something beyond time. With Mr. Twist’s loving assistance, she is plumbing those depths again.

Going South? (Or North?)

Dell' Arte in SF and Shaking Up Shakespeare Summer

"The List" in Sunday's SF Chronicle Datebook features a photo from the Dell'Arte production of Artemesia, which plays at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco through June 3. Artemesia premiered in Blue Lake at last summer's Mad River Festival. Www.magictheatre.org.

Also in Sunday's SF Chronicle Datebook, Robert Hurwitt describes several changes in various Shakespeare Festival organizations in and around the Bay Area. He also notes the changes underway for next year at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival:

The biggest changes are in store at the biggest festival of all, Ashland's Oregon Shakespeare Festival, where Artistic Director Libby Appel is stepping down at the end of the season. Her replacement, Bill Rauch, has already shaken things up considerably. As of next season, both popular associate artistic directors, Penny Metropulos and Timothy Bond, will be gone, replaced by designer Christopher Acebo instead of a director. Among many other changes, the old preshow Green Show has been outsourced. Perhaps most significant for the future is Rauch's complete overhaul of the festival's new-play development programs and, judging by his plans for '08, an increased emphasis on Asian and Latino works.

This article leads into a listing of "Shakespeare in the Bay Area" this summer. For North Coasters who saw North Coast Rep's recent production of Henry IV Part 1, it's worth noting that the play will be done in August at Marin Shakespeare Company, along with Part 2. (Details at www.marinshakespeare.org.)

Hurwitt notes that the most popular play this season is Macbeth, with a total of 5 Bay Area productions this spring and summer. A few months ago, when I was watching the second season of Slings and Arrows which deals with their production of the Scottish play at around the same time that I saw two old docus on Ian McKellen and Judi Dench, I was inspired to check out the old Peter Hall production of MacBeth starring those two great actors. (There is actually a restored version of this video with some sort of commentary by McKellen, but I saw the earlier VHS from the HSU library.) It was a fascinating production, all the more to me because I performed in the play in college. I played the Thane of Ross (and doubled some other characters) who of course is the fulcrum of the play. When Ross changes sides, it's decisive. Uh huh. Anyway, I was a little taken aback to see that the actor playing Ross in that production was Ian McDiarmid, later to achieve fame as the evil Emperor in the Star Wars movies.

In our Knox College production, I had an early scene with Richard Hoover, who played King Duncan. Hoover went on to become a production designer in Hollywood, for the classic Twin Peaks, the current series Numbers, and other TV shows and feature films.

A Little Illness Music

I've got this cold or flu kind of thing. You can't count on a regular cold pattern anymore, apparently--they seem to have their individual characteristics, and ups and downs. But I've never been a suck-it-up and soldier-on type. I don't get sick very often, but when I do, I do it up big. I stay in bed longer, and the rest is resting. "Feed a cold" is also advice I've made into a lifestyle.

So I don't do much. This time around I spent several hours watching a VHS tape I made from TV programs in the 90s, back when the A&E cable channel actually tried to be an Arts & Entertainment channel, and Bravo! was about performance arts. Now they all play the same CSI reruns and have their own perverse "reality" shows. But there was a time that one or both of them ran imported programs from England, where an interviewer called Melvyn Bragg did interviews and so on with notable actors and other theatre artists.

I watched his interview/lunch with Albert Finney, and two fascinating pieces following Ian McKellen (then a youthful 45) in rep at the National Theatre over a season, and Judi Dench rehearsing and playing in A Little Night Music. The McKellen piece was a good insight into that life (in which he might be playing one part, rehearsing the next play, and learning lines for one after that on the same day) as well as a peek into his working process. One of the plays he was working on was Michael Frayn's translation and edited version of Chekhov's first and unproduced play, which Frayn dubbed Wild Honey. As he rehearsed, McKellen was driving himself crazy trying to understand the character he was playing, even going back to a full translation of Chekhov's script, with many long philosophical speeches. He was afraid he would be a disaster and bring down the production. He noted ruefully into his tape recorder that Frayn had shown up for a run-through and had simply grinned. But when the play opened, McKellen was astonished to hear the audience laughing--they had just revealed to him that the play was a comedy. It was also a hit. (Frayn himself tells this story about McKellen in the introduction to his "Plays: Two" volume.)

The Dench piece went back into her acting history with some wonderful clips from old productions. Olivier's "cry" as Oedipus is well-known theatrical legend, but Dench as Lady MacBeth let out a truly terrifying and prolonged scream that deserves its own fame: it said volumes about the character. Dame Dench played Mother Courage in 2005, which must have been something to see, and hear. In this film piece, director Sir Peter Hall says that Dench was blessed with an extraordinary voice, "and in theatre, voice is very nearly all."