Stage Beauty
Directed by Richard Eyre.
Writing credits (play & screenplay) Jeffrey Hatcher.
Cast: Derek Hutchinson (Stage Manager), Claire Danes (Maria), Billy Crudup
(Ned Kynaston), Rupert Everett (Charles II), Ben Chaplin (George Villers, Duke of
Wellington ), Hugh Bonneville (Samuel Pepys), Jack Kempton (Call Boy), Richard
Griffiths (Sir Charles Sedley), Zoe Tapper (Nell Gwynn).
The 1660’s was a time in England when male actors could become famous for their ability to play Shakespearean female roles, which women were forbidden to perform. One such actor, Ned Kynaston was credited at that time, by the diarist Samuel Pepys, as being “the most beautiful woman on the stage”.
Stage Beauty is a very clever, very post-modern performance piece within which, the camera enables us a presence. We tread the boards and on the edge, twixt ‘front and back’ stage, we are hushed lest we intrude on performance. We experience the intimacy between Kynaston and his dresser, Maria, who in awe of her master and his art, has her own aspirations.
‘Bonnie’ King Charles II while delightfully ‘campish’ is, as are perhaps the events that unfold, very much at the mercy of his mistress, the street-wise Nell Gwynn.
Taking advantage of the innocence of an earlier time, in a ‘back to basics’ style, this almost mundane story and setting succeed in presenting intellectual and visual delights while offering an admirable deconstruction of society and gender. Jeffrey Hatcher has obviously given this issue “much more thought” than most of us.
At the frontier of gender boundaries the protagonists explore, and are explored, within and without. With all the playfulness of TISM (This Is Serious Mum) this film manages to touch with uncommon honesty the depth of issues which plague the modern world.
To the end, never predictable, the veil is drawn.
Lou Crow
