FILM ARCHIVES

Please Don’t Leave Us, Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen

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Image via SirPatStew

Oh no. Nononono. Say it isn’t so. Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen have finished their double dose of Broadway, starring in back-to-back productions of No Man’s Land and Waiting for Godot. And that means they’re leaving us. Leaving us. Why would they do such a thing? And what can we do to stop it? Fair warning: we will consider kidnapping.

The Stewart/McKellen dream team closed their last Godot/No Man’s Land performance on March 30. (Our critic was only sorta impressed with the show, noting “neither piece offers a particularly incisive interpretation of the script.” However, she added, Stewart and McKellan’s joy in performing “infects the audience like a virus of sheer jubilation.”)

But the fun isn’t quite over: to celebrate their time on Broadway together, the two men released a series of insanely wonderful photos on Twitter of themselves doing touristy things: a stroll down Coney Island’s boardwalk, posing next to the Wall Street bull’s, er, hindquarters, standing hand-in-hand in front of the Stonewall Inn, and, as you can see above, bro-ing out with their arms around each other in front of our old building on Cooper Square.

Since the show began, Stewart has occasionally shared adorable photos of the two men, always under the hashtag #gogodididonyc (we don’t know what that means either). In honor of the show’s closing weeks, he decided to share some of the “outtakes,” sharing one a day. The cumulative effect is quite breathtaking:

Technically, they’re not both leaving town: Stewart lives in Park Slope with his wife, jazz singer Sunny Ozell, where he spends his time rescuing birds, posing as a lobster in his bathtub and, from the looks of things, partaking in some really fine weed.

But McKellen lives in east London, and these photos, goofy and wonderful as they are, have an air of finality about them. A sense of moving on. A beautiful wave goodbye to the city and their time together. Oh God. My heart.

In closing, though, we’ll note that it’s not too late to visit us at our new office in the Financial District. We promise not to burst into floods of sad-happy tears until after you leave.

This article from the Village Voice Archive was posted on April 2, 2014

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