Riffs on Shakespeare: Shakespearean Gala
Winter Garden Theatre
The National Post

The undefeated English heavy was accorded a worshipful but mostly uncloying birthday bash in Saturday's Shakespearean Gala at the Winter Garden. It may be stretching things to call him still the world's top pop playwright, as Ian McKellen (a self-described "eccentric old thespian") did in his typically charming filmed introduction; I'm sure that on any given day there are others who sell more tickets, but we can agree that his long-term earnings are incomparable, and will probably continue to be.

The nine live performers ran a fascinating gamut of styles. At one extreme of old-fashioned mellifluousness there was John Neville, who, perhaps inhibited by the age factor, offered what amounted to a self-absorbed recitation of Romeo's balcony scene; though on the other side of the stage his contemporary Claire Bloom (also the evening's host) was giving a Juliet who, with no perceptible attempt to act young, simply and economically was.

She later gave Kate's submission speech from The Taming of the Shrew, a surprising choice that she disarmed by putting the whole thing into ironic inverted commas; it left you wondering whether she could make this work in a production of the whole play. (Christopher Plummer, her Petruchio, looked happily bemused.)

In categories of their own were Measha Brueggergosman, in a transporting rendition of a Desdemona aria from Verdi's Otello; and the German actress Angela Winkler, giving a very inward account of the most Hamlet soliloquy. ("Sehen oder nicht sehen, das ist die Frage.")

Colm Feore, more formal in diction but progressive in thought, offered another of the prince's soul-searchings, plus the conscious- stricken speech of the king (he has in his time played both roles), the latter delivered as if he didn't believe a word of it. Maybe this worked in context, but it seemed very strange in isolation.

Finally, and crowningly, there was Simon Russell Beale, who, as Iago and Richard III, offered contemporary Shakespeare at its best; witty, individual, self-scorching, apparently casual but in full command of the form. For Richard's attempted seduction of Queen Elizabeth I (better but less-known than the earlier and similar scene with the Lady Anne) he was joined by Helen Schlesinger (Clytemnestra in The Oresteia) who had earlier offered a rather heavy-handed Viola but was here superb. He has played the role, she hasn't; and the interplay between his experience and her spontaneity, each drawing out the other, was electric. It had the rare excitement of an audition suddenly taking off into a full performance.