McKellen Feels the Lure of London Again???

After publicly decrying West End audiences a few years back, Sir Ian McKellen is reportedly feeling a yearning to tread the boards again in the capital. He was last seen in London in the 1997 productions of Enemy of the People and Peter Pan at the National. The following year, the multi award-winning actor declared he was ready to get back to "proper", ie regional, theatre and signed up to a repertory season at the West Yorkshire Playhouse. There he appeared in a triple bill of Present Laughter, The Tempest and The Seagull, the last of which won him a Barclays Award for Best Supporting Performance. Since then, McKellen has mainly been tied up with film commitments, most notably, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, which begins this winter with the release of The Fellowship of the Ring. He is currently appearing on Broadway in a British-led production of August Strindberg's Dance of Death, co-starring Helen Mirren and directed by Sean Mathias. In a recent interview in New York, McKellen said he'd like to return to the West End "if the material is right".

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