![]() And here he lets down his hair and lifts up his skirt to reveal a nifty pair of legs and an appetite for double entendre: when told by decorators that "your front porch could do with a good lick", McKellen adopts a suitable look of mock-outrage.īut his widow is also something of a stage-door Twankey who drops in references to Trevor Nunn and Fiona Shaw and ends up doing a sub-Dietrich solo turn. But, appearing first in what looks like a pink and orange wigwam, she is also a decidedly frisky dame: as she cheerfully tells a visitor, "I've got something cheesy bubbling in my oven."Īs with many classical actors, including Olivier, there has always been something of the pub entertainer about McKellen. His Twankey, although resident in Peking, audibly hails from Wigan where she was a leading light in amdram and was used to giving her all to the student prince. The great thing about McKellen is that he brings on a genuine whiff of old music-hall: all that time in his northern youth spent watching Norman Evans and Suzette Tarri has clearly not gone to waste. But I not only warmed more to the knight's Dame but found Aladdin infinitely more enjoyable than Snow White: the former, although rough and ready, feels like a genuine family panto and the latter more of a showcase for a star. It may be an unfair comparison since McKellen is playing Widow Twankey and Lily a Wicked Queen. Sir Ian McKellen and Lily Savage go head to head, as it were, in this season's London pantos.
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