Richard ii

[pepperland2.livejournal.com]

Hi,
I am a "Richard II"-fanatic from Germany. Some years ago I read a novel by Rebecca Gable and that got me into the Plantagenet theme (uh, that's rather an embarrassing way, is it not?). I almost fell in love with Richard II when I saw the Shakespeare play in 2005 in Germany, although it wasn't very good. Somehow I forgot all about it.

But some months ago I googled the internet and I came across a picture of Ian McKellen as Richard and PENG! I was commpletely out of my mind :-) Now I finished writing a parody about the play and hope to get it published one day.


Oh, that blue eyes... the blue flower of romanticism


I coloured the original picture, because....... I am obsessed


Some playing around with morphing


Guh............


That's the face!
This is how I always imagined Richard in the play without even knowing the 60s McKellen


All pics taken from the official Ian McKellen website, except the first: http://www.photographersdirect.com/buyers/stockphoto.asp?imageid=2283015


 

Comments

[angevin2.livejournal.com]

Sir Ian is All Teh Sex. For that matter, so is Richard II. A good match, therefore.

You might enjoy this (http://angevin2.livejournal.com/668684.html): there are some lovely clips of Sir Ian there. There are even a few where the stupid narrator doesn't talk over him.

[pepperland2.livejournal.com]

oh, that lovely clips! I know them by heart. I just wish I could shut up that poor man's Draco Malfoy for talking over the thing.

[shayheyred.livejournal.com]

At the RSC in the 70s, I saw a version of Richard II starring both Richard Pasco and Ian McKellan as Richard, both switching off with that role and Bolingbroke. McKellan was more measured, and is a subtle actor, but Pasco was the consummate "actor" as Richard. I enjoyed both of them.

[angevin2.livejournal.com]

...HOLY CRAP YOU SAW THAT PRODUCTION I AM SO JEALOUS.

I wasn't even born yet when that production happened, but OMG.

[shayheyred.livejournal.com]

Actually, I saw it two years in a row, because I was studying in Stratford the first year, when Pasco played Richard against Morgan Sheppard as Bolingbroke, and then the next year when I was at Oxford and went to Stratford to see Pasco and Richardson alternate. The moment I remember most is Richard doing his "Down, down I come," speech in an overly dramatic manner, and the director had Henry BOlingbroke break into sarcastic applause. A few years later I met Morgan Sheppard when he came to Washington, D.C. with the RSC in another production. I got to go to the cast party, and told him he had managed that moment of Bolingbroke being both sarcastic and funny brilliantly. He seemed stunned that someone had remembered him when the whole thrust of the show is about Richard.

It was a truly marvelous production, and I am so happy I got to see it three times.

[pepperland2.livejournal.com]

I think that production starred Richard Pasco and Ian Richardson, not McKellen.
How I wish I could have seen all the plays back then...

[shayheyred.livejournal.com]

Yes, of course, you're so right. Duhh! ::smacks head:: I guess I was caught up in the McKellan discussion! That may have been the same year I saw McKellan in Hamlet in London...or nearly the same year.

[pepperland2.livejournal.com]

I am sooooooooo jealous....

[shayheyred.livejournal.com]

Don't be. That London production was AWFUL. I don't even remember if McKellen was any good, because the direction and the acting around him were terrible. You have to understand that at the time I was an actress and was about to start directing - and I kept being horrified by the production. Just some examples: every time Hamlet had a soliloquoy, everyone else on the stage froze in place, and a spotlight came down overhead on Hamlet. McKellen would then "assume a pose" that always seemed to be with one hand wafting in the air, the other on his hip. After about three of these the audience began to snicker, because it was overly pretentious (and there were four more to go!). Horatio - a character I adore - was played by a "hale fellow well met" kind of guy, who looked like a tennis pro, and who would have been better in a kitschy English mystery ("Hallo, Auntie! What have you done with the body, eh? Har har har!") and when he had to say the line, "Now cracks a noble heart," he actually felt around for Hamlet's pulse and then put his head on Hamlet's chest, and then checked to see if he was breathing. Calling Dr. Badactor! I mostly also fault the director who let it all happen.

It was by no means the worst production of Hamlet I've ever seen, but it was really close to it.

[pepperland2.livejournal.com]

The McKellen "Hamlet" did really get some bad critis those days, as I read on the official McKellen-website.
And those things you described.... ugh... but anyway, it was McKellen... ahhhhh... *stupid fangirl sigh*

[shayheyred.livejournal.com]

I have to say I really like him as an older actor, much as I liked Laurence Olivier when he started to age, but not as a youth.