Sir Ian McKellen is to play Hamlet for the third time in his career in a production this summer at the Edinburgh fringe. McKellen, who first took on the role in 1971 and starred last year in an “age-blind” staging in Windsor, will share the part with the Danish dancer Johan Christensen. The pair will perform with members of the Edinburgh Festival Ballet in the 75-minute production directed and choreographed by Peter Schaufuss.
McKellen said that, at a crucial moment in the play: “Shakespeare describes in detail a dance, performed by the actors touring through Elsinore. Hamlet says: ‘What a piece of work is a man … how infinite in faculties, in form and moving, how express and admirable in action.’ The same could be said of Peter Schaufuss and his company of wonderful dancers. It’s inspiring to watch them and work with them.”
Christensen has previously danced the role of Hamlet in a performance using audio recordings of John Gielgud as the title character. The new show – which also features Luke Schaufuss, the director’s son, and British dancer Stefan Wise – will run for almost the entire month of August and is set to be one of the hottest tickets at this year’s fringe, expected to be the biggest edition of the arts festival since the pandemic began. Hamlet will be staged at the new 400-seat Ashton Hall, named after the choreographer Frederick Ashton, at St Stephen’s theatre, formerly St Stephen’s church.
McKellen has performed at the Edinburgh festival several times in his career, including as Richard II and Edward II with Prospect Theatre Company in 1969. In 2019 he took his one-man show, comprising anecdotes and characters from across his career, to the Edinburgh international festival as part of his 80th-birthday tour.
In his ninth decade, the star is still a regular presence on stage. Playing the Prince of Denmark in his 80s – when the character is generally assumed to be 30 at the oldest – was a way for McKellen to “look into how much we need to see what we’re hearing”, he said at an event before the Windsor production began. It also provided a chance to return to a role he had played 50 years earlier on a UK and European tour directed by Robert Chetwyn. “I didn’t reckon I was any good,” he remarked of that 1971 production, “and nor did anyone else.”
His 2021 Hamlet, directed by Sean Mathias, included adventurous approaches to the soliloquies which were delivered both on an exercise bike and in a barber’s chair. The production, which was also colour- and gender-blind, received mixed reviews but McKellen was praised for his performance. In her review, the Guardian’s Arifa Akbar wrote: “His prince is sad without self-indulgence, his reflections an acceptance of impending mortality. He is sprightly, delivering a fast, physical performance, but trembles and bursts into tender, old man’s tears too.”
Hamlet was followed by a production of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard at the Theatre Royal Windsor with the same company of actors and McKellen as the servant Firs. Earlier this year, he was back on stage as part of a fundraising production at the Park theatre in north London. He was one of the surprise guest stars who took on the role of an investigator in a murder mystery spoof. Whodunnit (Unrehearsed) 2 – the return of a format first used at the Park in 2019 – required the actor playing the detective each night to repeat lines that they are fed through an earpiece.
The star, who has juggled blockbuster movies with Shakespearean lead roles and remained committed to smaller projects on stage and screen, recently declared himself ready for a new challenge. On Radio 4’s Today programme, he said he was still trying out different types of theatre production. “There are a few left – one would be the musical,” he explained, raising the enticing prospect of yet another performance to come.
