Actor says Shakespeare's archetypal heroes should be brought up to date

"THERE will always be some people who think that Shakespeare's plays should be set in a far distant land with floppy hats," the English actor, Sir Ian McKellen, said on Saturday.

He was being interviewed publicly by Michael Dwyer at an Irish Times film forum at Dublin's Screen Cinema, following the showing of his new film of Richard III.

McKellen discussed the current fashion for Shakespeare on screen, the difference between theatre and cinema, and the political resonances of the play with a large and appreciative audience.

Based on Richard Eyre's National Theatre production, McKellen's pared down version of Richard III is set in a violent, fascistic 1930s London, complete with blackshirts, machineguns and tanks. "The more particular you make the production, the more general its application," he declared. "When we did the play in Bucharest they thought it was all about Ceausescu. In Cairo they saw Saddam Hussein.

"Richard is the archetype of a dictator in the same way that Hamlet is the archetype of a young man," said the 56 year old actor, who later signed copies of the annotated screenplay he co wrote with the film's director, Richard Loncraine.

"Before this, I didn't know what a screenplay was," he confessed. "It's not just the words; there are all the questions of how you're going to approach the shooting and setting."

In a lively question and answer session, McKellen several times asked for a show of hands from those present on whether devices in the film worked. One member of the audience protested that she found the heavily ironic ending (in which Richard falls to his death to the strains of Al Jolson singing I'm Sittin' On Top Of The World) grotesque.

"It's a question of emotion as well as rational judgment," responded McKellen, who sees film as a more visceral, less intellectual experience than theatre, adding that "we were damn lucky, in making that transition, that the story and language of Richard III are relatively simple."

At one point it was planned to shoot the film in Ireland but "the amount of money available from your tax breaks here would have been discounted by the expense of the number of people we would have had to bring over for this particular production," said McKellen.

He described the film as "basically a labour of love, made on a very tight budget. I gave my salary back, which went towards paying for one extra day to shoot the battle scene.

Unlike many other British actors of his generation, McKellen - has rarely made the transition from the stage to the big screen, although that may now be changing. He insisted, however, that he did not envy the Hollywood success of contemporaries like Anthony Hopkins. "People say to me `Don't you wish you'd played Hannibal Lecter?' But I tell them `No, because I've played Macbeth'."