This weekend we (along with my brother and a good friend) had the distinct pleasure of seeing the Royal Shakespeare Company's staging of King Lear, starring Ian McKellen.
While there are always things to be nit-picky about, staging or someone's delivery for example, overall I found the play absolutely riveting. We of course wanted to see Sir Ian onstage. The appearance of Sylvester McCoy, a former Dr. Who, as the Fool was also exciting. But really, it made me realize that it's been quite some time (indeed, I can't remember the last) since I've seen real, honest-to-god theatre. McKellen and the actor playing Edgar, in particular, were really quite phenomenal and disappeared into their characters. I felt so sorry for Lear.
It being Los Angeles, we had a pretty exciting celeb encounter: Tom Hanks, his wife Rita Wilson, and two of their sons (I think they have more) were in the audience for the Saturday matinee. As a testament to McKellen's acting, at some point my brother said "You know, it's pretty impressive, really. 'Cause, you know, (pointing) that's Tom Hanks over there, but (pointing to the stage) that is not really Ian McKellen, is it?"
Indeed.
It was rather good, wasn't it?
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