Plays and Players, February 1990, by Vera Lustig "Badge of Pride" ----------------------------------------------------------- Ian McKellen talks to Vera Lustig about the revival of Bent" at the National, and about gay awareness. His teapot has "Henceforward" painted on its side. "A present from Alan Ayckbourn," explains Ian McKellen, setting this memento from his last West End appearance before me. "Now, there's a talking point for your article," he adds, happy to be of help. Having done a little writing himself, Ian McKellen may well know how intractable that opening paragraph can be. Or maybe not. The actor who came to the profession via undergraduate dramatics at Cambridge is a seemingly effortless communicator. When young, McKellen wanted to be either a journalist or a teacher; and in addition to his one-man shows, complete with audience participation, he has championed causes like the Rose Theatre, the embattled British Theatre Association and, since he came out two years ago, gay rights. It was he who spoke to the minister responsible for drafting the Local Government Bill containing the notorious clause which made it illegal for a local authority to "promote...the acceptability of homosexuality as part of a pretended family relationship." "And this from the Tories, who are forever parading their support for individual liberty," say McKellen. His warning of the dangers of The Clause at the Laurence Olivier Awards ceremony two years ago allegedly rattled some of the bigwigs involved in that jamboree, but proved to be a rallying call against The Clause (now enshrined in the statute books as Section 28). McKellen's courage in making that stand was widely applauded, but, as he points out: "I belong to that charmed circle of people who probably can't be hurt by speaking out. It isn't so easy for everyone. Since I came out, you wouldn't believe the letters I've had, from people all over the country, some of them older than me, some of whom have lived the whole of their lives without telling anyone. Yet it's vital to be free to declare one's sexuality. After all it's something straight people do all the time." "This play always get me speechifying," he says of Martin Sherman's 'Bent,' set in Berlin and in the Detention Camp at Dachau. McKellen created the role of Max in the world premiere of "Bent" at the Royal Court eleven years ago. When he first played the role, he was still in what he call "the cupboard - a dark, musty, dusty, cobwebby place, with only skeletons for company." Things have changed for him since that premiere. "I have now, at 50, come to terms with being gay and understand some of the repression that has gone on in my own life." But the situation for gays as whole has changed for the worse over the past few years, with fear and hatred fuelled by Aids and blessed by Section 28. "Now local authorities can't easily fund gay helplines and youth clubs," say McKellen. The Royal Court, which staged the premiere of "Bent" with impunity (though questions were asked in Parliament) is the beneficiary of hard-won funding from the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, so it would now, like any other locally subsidised venue, be taking a great risk if it staged a play like "Bent." Since the passing of the GLC, the National Theatre receives no local authority subsidy, so it is a relatively safe place for the play. McKellen is warmly appreciative of the new-broom team of Eyre and Aukin for offering a slot to "Bent" after a recent benefit performance of the play (with McKellen and Michael Cashman and directed by Sean Mathias, as per the National production) at the Adelphi to raise funds for the newly formed Stonewall Group of gay rights activists. The critical response to the 1979 production of "Bent" was as McKellen puts it: "rather mean-spirited. Straight people, that is, most people, when they see the play, perceive it in terms of an aspect of the Holocaust. They judge it as a historical document. They say that Martin Sherman has found an easy way in to high passion and deep feeling. But they miss the true passion in the play, which is not just to do with Nazism. It's to do with love." Max makes a long journey through pain and love to self- knowledge in this play - which contains a joyous and poignant scene of verbal love-making between Max and his gay-activist friend, Horst, in a brief but still supervised break from their pointless, crushing task of shifting rocks back and forth. McKellen ponders on what kind of life the Max of Act One would be leading in Britain today: "He would have left his family - fuck 'em. He'd be in London, out dancing and taking drugs every night. He'd hate himself and not quite understand why. He'd never read a newspaper. He'd hate gay activists - what have they got to do with his life? And he would occasionally put on a suit and go to a first night with a glamorous woman on his arm." Almost the final act Max performs in the play is to take off his own jacket and put on his murdered friend's. Horst had criticised Max, in their furtive conversations, for wearing a yellow star badge rather than the pink triangles worn by gays in the camps. This was a characteristic scam on Max's part - Jews got a marginally less raw deal than gays in the camps. "No-one tells Max to put on that jacket," says McKellen. "He does it out of love for his dead friend. It's a badge of pride for him. When I did it at the Adelphi it was a coming home for me as well as a coming out. It was a debt I owed to the play, because when I did it in the original production, that gesture meant so much less to me. I had felt rather guilty then. But now I can do it with a flourish and a pride and a total commitment." Those characteristics have always marked McKellen's work. As a young actor in the late 60s and early 70s he arguably had too much flourish. "Ian McKellen - so mannered" we would sneer with irritating regularity. In spite of ourselves though, we found him compelling - restive and lithe. And then there was that voice - sibilant and sobbing, with the vowel sounds solidly rooted in Lancashire. Maturity has brought stillness to his acting, without quenching it. Ian McKellen has run the gamut of classical roles: Hamlet, Romeo, Richard II, Edward II, Giovanni in "'Tis Pity She's A Whore," on to Trevor Nunn's intimate "Macbeth" and Peter Halls' "Corolianus." "There's always a temptation to clamber up the classics. You know they're great. You just have to measure up to them. With a new play you have to be able to judge the script from the page - and that can be extremely difficult." It isn't something McKellen has shirked though - appearing as he has in new plays by Wesker, Arbuzov, Saunders, Stoppard... "I have counted up and over the past ten years I've done at least as many modern plays as classics." When we met, in early December, he was filming "Othello" for BBC2. "I'm glad more people will get to see the production," he tells me. His Iago is a magnificent non-bravura performance - a finely detailed study in dry, watchful, soldierly correctness, tightly containing a surging sexual jealousy. It's a performance which gives muscle and shape to the whole production without monopolising it. "'My' Iago? 'Shakespeare's' Iago!" McKellen corrects me, as we discuss his interpretation. He reminds me that a part is so called "because it is only a part - not the whole play." True to that belief, McKellen embarked in 1972 on a project which he hoped would provide an alternative to the idea that theatre companies were inspired by one individual (whether an actor, director or producer). With Edward Petherbridge he invited a number of leading actors to form a self-governing touring company. Members of the Actors' Company included Caroline Blakiston, Felicity Kendal, Robert Eddison (to be seen in "Bent"), Frank Middlemass, Paola Dionisotti and Jack Shepherd. Work ranged from "'Tis Pity..." to a stage adaptation of psychologist R.D. Laing's "Knots" - with the emphasis on the classics. It was a difficult structure to sustain: "Company meetings would go on for hours, because we discussed 'everything' before reaching a decision. Marriages and relationships broke down under the strain," a former member told me. The Actors' Company lasted three years. McKellen has never been a man for easy options in his work or in the way he conducts his life: "As a gay you have to become politicised about your sexuality - and that's time- consuming." That politicisation is not merely about bitterness and confrontation. There's affirmation too: "Gays say that to be a man is nothing to do with machismo. It's not to do with being the head of a family. You can still be a man without any of that. Marrying and having children is great if that's what you sincerely want. But it doesn't prove your manhood. You don't prove you're a man by dominating women. There are other strengths." Photos: - Ian McKellen as Max and Michael Cashman as Horst in the benefit performance of "Bent" at the Adelphi Thetre in June 1989. (Gordon Rainsford) - The team for "Bent" at the NT, l to r; Ian McKellen (Max), Paul Rhys (Rudy), Michael Cashman (Horst), director Sean Mathias and writer Martin Sherman. - poster for the National Theatre production of "Bent." - McKellen's "magnificent, non-bravura" Iago in Trevor Nunn's "Othello" for the RSC. ----------------------------------------------------------- Bentley's Bedlam http://www.BetsyDa.com/bedlam.html This website is for information and entertainment purposes only and is not intended to infringe on copyrights held by others.