Featured Movies
Partners
Stage Beauty"The most beautiful woman on the London stage," was Samuel Pepys' verdict on Restoration star Edward "Ned" Kynaston. Little else is known about the actor, but director Richard Eyre uses Pepys' assessment as a jumping off point for this witty, sophisticated costume drama about gender confusion, jealousy, insecurity, and the devious behind-the-scenes machinations of the English theatre.
Stage Beauty is set in the 1660s, when women were still forbidden to appear on stage. Kynaston (Crudup) is the theatre's top draw thanks to his gasping turn as Desdemona, which packs in crowds night after night, wowed by the "reality" of his/her death scene. His biggest fan is his dresser Maria (Danes). Watching from the sidelines with quiet awe (and, predictably, unrequited love), she harbours acting ambitions of her own and secretly borrows her employer's costume late at night to perform a more authentic version of Desdemona in a back-street tavern production of 'Othello'.
Trouble arises when Charles II (Everett), desperately seeking a new thrill from the theatre, decides to listen to his bawdy mistress Nell Gwyn (Tapper) and lift the ban on women acting. This has dire consequences for both Kynaston (suddenly out of favour and unemployable) and Maria (suddenly thrust into the limelight where her mediocrity as an actor is exposed).
Though at times frothier than a grande cappuccino, Stage Beauty is not quite as light on its feet as it's most obvious antecedent, Shakespeare In Love. When Kynaston's world starts falling apart, for instance, the tone gets notably darker as he loses his patronage from sometime lover the Duke of Buckingham (Chaplin) and finds a lack of sympathy from his former colleagues. Eyre also often favours hand-held camera work over sweeping vistas, which gives the film a surprising grittiness and energy rarely found in luvvie-filled costume romps.
If there's a major flaw it's that the central love story between Kynaston and Maria never really convinces. Crudup and Danes both excel in their roles and have oodles of chemistry, but the first half of the film doesn't feed the relationship enough for their coupling to resonate. That said there's still much to recommend and Eyre even manages to pull off the film's conclusion, despite the fact that it depends on audiences buying into the notion that Brando-style naturalism originated 400 years earlier than it did.
|
