Words from Ian McKellen

I may be the only actor to do this play twice: at Bolton School I had played the fair maid of Fressingfield. Now I was her lover, rival to Derek Jacobi as the Prince. The Marlowe Society did productions in the summer-long vacation at the Arts Theatre in Cambridge, often with a professional director. In 1960 we took "Friar Bacon" with "Dr Faustus" to an open-air theatre in the Bancroft Gardens at Stratford-upon-Avon between the main theatre and the church where Shakespeare is buried. After all the school camps, I felt at home. But on this visit we met some of the RSC actors. After this jaunt we re-visited the Lyric Opera House in Hammersmith.

Michael Bakewell, a Cambridge graduate, directed both plays and the casts overlapped. — Ian McKellen, December 2006

Comments and Reviews

In repertory with "Dr Faustus"
Cambridge 25-26 July 1960
Open-air Avonbank Gardens, Stratford, 3-4 August 1960
Lyric Opera House Hammersmith, London, 22-31 August 1960