Ian McKellen and Judi Dench Share Tea and Memories of Their Legendary Macbeth

Back in 1979, Judy Dench and Ian McKellen (then without the Dame and the Sir in front of their names) gave me one of life’s Uh huh moments, when I sat down to watch them star in a TV production of Macbeth. I had studied the play at school and, frankly, it hadn’t lit my candle, let alone fire. I think I struggled to relate to Macbeth and his wife – and although I didn’t find the text impenetrable, I think the fact that the “performances” were left to me and my classmates (we didn’t have a video player in my school) – not to mention my frazzled English teacher, the real power of the dialogue did not hit home. Shakespeare didn’t write his plays for them to be read, let alone by (fairly) bored schoolchildren many centuries later. He wrote them to be performed, and so the experience of watching McKellen and Dench immerse themselves in these roles – accompanied by very few props – was transformative. That uh huh moment was realising that not only were their performances brilliant, but the…