A CUT above the rest; Joe Riley gets the Liverpool lowdown from Sir Ian McKellen.

Byline: Joe Riley

YES he's got to be - yes he is - even if he doesn't make the claim personally.

Ian McKellen IS Britain's greatest actor, outstripping Hopkins, Jacobi, Branagh and even old man Finney in scope and latter-day fame.

And he's heading this way: a phenomenon repeated for the first time in four decades.

The ennobled star of stage and screen treads the boards at Liverpool Playhouse in a new drama, The Cut, by Mark Ravenhill.

The combination of Laurence Olivier's natural successor speaking words by the most talked of British playwright since John Osbourne gives the pre- Capital of Culture Year of Performance the degree of gravitas it deserves.

But for Sir Ian, freed temporarily from the global mantle of battling grotesque creatures as Gandalf in Lord Of The Rings (or sci-fi antihero Magneto in X-Men), the play's the thing - and a cosy thing at that.

"I increasingly enjoy working in small theatres," he declares. "The Playhouse is small compared, say, with the Empire. So coming back to a small theatre isn't that far removed from making a film in terms of level of performance."

The two forms are now enmeshed in the McKellen CV.

Coming up on screen, a third X-Men movie and a major role in The Da Vinci Code, as well as a stage summons from the Royal Shakespeare Company to conquer the Everest that is King Lear.

When Ian McKellen first walked through the stage door of Liverpool Playhouse in 1968, it was a year before the Edinburgh Festival performance of Richard II which put his name in what have since been perpetual lights.

He is duly modest: "I played - not that anyone but myself would remember now - in The Bacchae (Greek tragedy) and in A Doll's House (Ibsen).

"I also directed The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie."

But there had been one earlier visit toWilliamson Square by the Burnley-born son of a civil engineer, who grew up inWigan before becoming head boy of nearby Bolton School.

"I came to the Playhouse to see Look Back In Anger (John Osbourne's mould-breaking play). The cast was led by John Stride."

Such memories will doubtless come flooding back next week as Sir Ian commands centre stage playing a character with a dark secret in Mark Ravenhill's The Cut.

But there is also a promise he made to a very special person - his stepmother.

"She was brought up in Rock Ferry and will be 100 in August. "She often tells me how she used to queue for the sixpenny seats in the balcony at the Playhouse. She can remember Robert Donat (Oscar winning star of the 1939 movie Goodbye Mr Chips) and the Redgraves being there, as well as the director William Armstrong.

"So I've said I'll go up to the back of the theatre to see if her seats are still there - but I guess they cost a little more than sixpence now."

McKellen, hewn as a product of repertory in Coventry and Nottingham - wages pounds 9 a week, digs pounds 3 - is no snob.

He recently played a bit part as a conman author with writer's block in Coronation Street, and followed through donning drag to play dame in pantomime at Kevin Spacey's Old Vic Theatre.

But relatively late in his career, cinema has turned McKellen into a celluloid god. And not without reason. His Richard III - set in a fascist England - was head and shoulders above Olivier.

"It's all just chance," says Sir Ian. "You get asked to do these things, and if you happen to be free you do. Then suddenly people know who you are a little bit."

Yes. Like 100,000 taking to the streets for a Lord Of The Rings first night in Wellington, New Zealand.

"What's pleased me most about the films I have been in which have been very popular, is that they have been so for the right reasons. "I think Lord Of The Rings is a terrific trilogy. I am also proud of The X-Men, and think this third one will be as good as the others.

"For Da Vinci Code it was a thrill to work with Tom Hanks and Hollywood royalty like Ron Howard the director. He's made a very, very exciting film as far as I can judge."

McKellen plays Sir Leigh Teabing, a rich and eccentric expert on the Holy Grail. To say more (the movie opens May 19) would spoil it for those still unfamiliar with Dan Brown's book.

The same enigma surrounds Ravenhill's play, which has McKellen as a conscience-troubled family man who hates his day job administering 'the cut.'

"What it is is never defined," says Sir Ian. "Mark Ravenhill even suggests a blackout so the audience never discovers exactly what the cut is.

"But basically it's something which keeps the underclass in its place. So it can be anything you want it to be."

In an earlier conversation, Ravenhill described it to me as "something with an Orwellian Room 101 feel. Think of your worst fears. Something nobody talks about."

Yet Ian McKellen offers parallels: "In South Africa I suppose it was the pass book. Elsewhere it would be calling people untouchables. In other countries it might be the actual administration of drugs - whatever society does to keep people down.

"But the play is actually about the effects on those who have to administer something which has outlived its usefulness.

"The original appeal to me was that it seemed to be about what happens to those who have had a part in a corrupt regime once it is abandoned. It can take a lifetime to recover from misdeeds done in the name of the law.

"Playwrights create good parts about characters in emotional uproar, but I have just come from playingWidow Twankey, who didn't seem to have many problems in life."

Next year brings Lear, the ultimate challenge, directed by Trevor Nunn for the RSC. "Theatre is a young man's game. It's exhausting in a way that filming isn't.

"And you certainly do need energy for Lear, so one's 60s (Sir Ian will be 67 next month) are better than one's 80s.

"But just because the character's old you don't have to be old . . . it's called acting.

"So after Liverpool I'm going to take the rest of the year off, getting myself fit and ready.

"I've played in Lear before, but never the title role. That will be another kettle of fish.

"But I still enjoy films as well as theatre. I wouldn't like to think I couldn't do either of them ever again. They each have their allure."

But no marathon for The Cut: "Just 90 minutes and very intense," says the man himself.

CAPTION(S):

SCI-FI VILLAIN: As Magneto in The X-Men' RING MASTER: Sir Ian as Gandalf in Lord Of The Rings' STREET STAR: Sir Ian's appearance in Coronation Street was the talk of soapland. Left, a scene from The Cut