‘ACTING SHAKESPEARE’ : McKELLEN . . . AS WE LIKE HIM

He’s been here with this show before. He opened in it again Wednesday at the Westwood Playhouse--on the eve, as he aptly pointed out, of Shakespeare’s 423rd birthday--and all one can helplessly sputter and babble is that Ian McKellen is better than ever at “Acting Shakespeare”: more measured, more astutely timed, more amusing, deft, at ease and in tune.

Any program that warns “this performance will probably include . . . “ puts one in mind of the antiquarian by the side of the road whose shingle read: “By appointment or by chance.” There’s the promise of spontaneity in such relationships--room for surprise.

The surprise Wednesday was that we got not only McKellen, but all of him--all that the program suggested and a lot more.

From the opening “Seven ages of man” speech by Jaques, we cantered through many parts of “Hamlet,” (all of the players’ scene with McKellen playing every role and delivering a humorously “today” version of the advice to the players), galloped through some triumphant “Henry V,” trotted through more of “As You Like It,” a smidgen of “Henry VI, Part 3,” some wicked (and wickedly funny) “Richard III,” finally confronting a Melrose Avenue pup of a Romeo and a Valley girl Juliet.

Shakespeare our contemporary? Indeed. And that was just Act I.

Act II was reserved for more metaphysical probing. McKellen offered burnished excerpts from “Richard II,” such affected and affecting readings of that fatal, vaulting egocentricity, that one fairly ached to see him do the whole thing. (Now there’s a project for the Center Theatre Group.)

This was leavened by readings of Samuel Pepys’ tersely comic disdain of the overwrought Shakespeare of his day, a humorous incarnation of David Garrick overacting (including a speech he wrote for Macbeth’s death scene, punctured by then-critic George Bernard Shaw’s bemused assessment: “It must not be supposed he does this solely because it is wrong . . . though there is no other reason.”)

Best of all, we got a McKellen in peak form, fashionably decked out in a loose, mod, satiny suit, expressing his pleasure at being back in Westwood, even if sooner than expected. (“Wild Honey’s” early demise on Broadway prompted this rerun of “Acting Shakespeare” to fill in the vacated time.)

But McKellen had to be sincere. Advance ticket sales had made it obvious he was welcome. His Los Angeles audience was paying him the supreme compliment of turning out in force to see a show it remembered with enough pleasure to want to see again.

And that audience will be duly rewarded (as it was Wednesday), since there are enough departures from the past in this round of “Acting Shakespeare” to augment the experience.

Numerous anecdotes spice up the evening--witty, wonderful stuff, apocryphal or no, garnered from the annals of the English stage. (When Sir Robert Helpmann planned a ballet of “Hamlet,” Sir Donald Wolfit asked in horror, “You’re going to dance ‘Hamlet,’ Bobby?” To which Helpmann replied, “Why not, Donald? You’ve been singing it for years.”) Such delicious gossip becomes the mortar that holds together the show’s more serious passages.

The finale remains a classic--an overblown, tongue-in-cheek lesson in understanding “Macbeth” that would have thrilled Sir Henry Irving and raised an eyebrow or two among skeptics like Shaw. It feels at moments as if Salieri (a role McKellen played in “Amadeus” on Broadway) had devised it, ranging as it does from the sublime to the perversely satirical.

In its richness and versatility “Acting Shakespeare” is a performance that might cure teen-agers who’ve never cracked a book, much less seen a play, or who’ve been terminally turned off by bad Shakespeare. But it is also (and perhaps chiefly) a delight for the already-persuaded: anyone with an affection for Shakespeare, an appreciation of an actor’s sophistication, talent, wit and sheer enjoyment of his amazing line of work.

Performances at 10886 Le Conte Ave. in Westwood run Tuesdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m.; Sundays at 7:30 p.m., with Saturday and Sunday matinees at 2:30 p.m. (213-208-5454 or 213-410-1062).

The show was extended by a week before it ever opened--through May 10--because of a rush on tickets ($17.50-$22.50), demonstrating that, contrary to popular misconception, Shakespeare, in the right hands, can be a draw.