It seems extraordinary that arguably the leading actor of the past 50 years, Ian McKellen, and certainly the most distinguished theatre critic, Irving Wardle, who has died aged 93, should both have cut their teeth on the same northern amateur stage, the Bolton Little theatre.
Irving’s father, John Wardle, a librarian and drama critic on the Bolton Evening News, had co-founded the Little in 1931 along with several like-minded colleagues. Irving saw his first play there, in 1937 – a children’s play, Fifinella, by the producer and director Basil Dean, in which three young “plants” interrupted the show to declare it was rubbish. He was aware, he said in retrospect, that “as soon as the dramatic pretence begins, it generates a force field that becomes as tangible as barbed wire if anyone tries to walk through it”.
