PBS brings McKellen as 'King Lear' to the masses

UNIVERSAL CITY, Calif. — Sir Ian McKellen received rave reviews for his performance in the title role of "King Lear," but he's quick to give credit where credit is due.

The playwright.

"Lear — it's all there. It's all pretty obvious what's going on," he said. "Although a psychiatrist reviewed the production and praised me for having clearly done my research into the particularity of Lear's mental problem. I've done nothing of the sort. I've done no research whatsoever. I just played the part as it seemed to me the words wanted me to. And the brilliance was not mine, but Shakespeare's.

"At a time when naturalism wasn't the order of the day in the theater, he (Shakespeare) landed on the naturalistic truths about the psychiatric state of Lear without having, of course, in his own time, the language that we have now to describe it."

Although the tour crossed continents and hemispheres, McKellen could only appear before so many audiences in so many theaters. But his performance will be available to virtually every American on PBS's "Great Performances" March 25 at 7 p.m. on KUED-Ch. 7.

"Unless you were able to get to New York, London, Los Angeles, Singapore … or New Zealand at just the right time, you missed unquestionably a major dramatic performance featuring simply titanic talent," said Stephen Segaller, vice president of content for WNET.

"And that is the brilliance of 'Great Performances.' It brings audiences around the country an incredible range of music, drama and dance performances, performances they would never be able to see otherwise."

So, once the tour ended, McKellen and the rest of the cast recorded their production on a soundstage in London. And viewers can see him as King Lear — although he's not promising the same performance someone might have caught in a theater.

"I think my experience of acting can be divided into two," McKellan said. "For the first 15, 20 years, it was my great pride to be a professional who gave the same performance every night. It didn't matter whether you came to a matinee. It didn't matter whether you were in Minneapolis or in London. McKellen would deliver.

"And then I worked with a director who said, 'You're talking about dead theater, Ian, and I want you to be involved in live theater, which is a performance for this audience and this audience alone. Forget last night and don't look forward to tomorrow. This is the event. This is live theater, which gives you a license to respond to not only a particular audience that is there, but respond to the fact that you're 24 hours older than you were when you last played the part.'