Stage Beauty
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Movie Reviews of Stage Beauty
Movie Review: "Saturday, Othello...the other one..."
Summary: 5 Stars
Comparisons between "Stage Beauty" and "Shakespeare in Love" are inevitable, but this 2004 film does not suffer much by the contrast to that Oscar winner for Best Picture. Both films deal with the conventions of the English stage that dictated the roles of women be played by men and while both have a woman who wants to play a woman's role, this one has a man who wants to play only women's roles. Both films conclude with a live performance in which the focal character ends up playing the opposite of their original roles. Both films are intricately involved with the Shakespeare plays being performed to such an extent that it goes beyond life imitating art. But whereas "Shakespeare in Love" was about writing and love, "Stage Beauty" is about acting and love, and I think it is ultimately more about its primary artistic focus than about romance.
When it comes to performing the classical plays of Shakespeare or the tragedies of the ancient Greeks, I believe in realistic (nee naturalistic) acting rather than following the acting conventions of those periods in contemporary performances. I enjoy those conventions, but I also think that if you can break the poetic constraints of the dialogue you can make those texts come alive for contemporary audiences. So one of the reasons "Stage Beauty" resonates so strong for me is that it not only endorses but also celebrates the idea that such realism can have much more of a profound impact on an audience that those historically accurate sytlistic conventions.
Half the inspiration for the original play "Compleat Female Stage Beauty" was when playwright Jeffrey Hatcher came across an entry in the diary of Samuel Pepys (Hugh Bonneville) that the actor Ned Kynaston was the most beautiful woman in the house when he was portraying one upon the stage. The other half was the decision of Charles II (Rupert Everett) to not only revoke the prohibition of women acting on stage, but to declare instead that henceforth only women would play female roles on the English stage. Thus we have the story of the most famous female impersonator of his day suddenly thrust into a world where he is no longer allowed to do what he does best.
Billy Crudup plays Kynaston and his success as a woman on stage hinges in part on the acting conventions of the time. He has studied the affected mannerisms demanded of the women characters on stage and if you would fault Kynaston's portrayal as Desdemona you can level the same charges against the Othello being played by Betterton (Tom Wilkinson). This is simply what acting was during the Stuart Restoration. Pointedly, a pair of women with aspirations towards acting on the stage doom Kynaston's career, one being his dresser, Maria (Claire Danes), who has memorized each inflection and gesture of his Desdemona and performed it in a tavern (which is technically not a theater). The other is Nell Gwynn (Zoe Tapper), the king's mistress, who has more than the king's ear when it comes to persuading him to change the way things are in the theaters of London.
There is, as you would suspect, some sexual tension between Maria and Kynaston, although it is more ardent on her part for most of the story. She loves him, but he loves acting. His argument against women playing women is that there is no "trick" to it. I was going to say that he means no skill to such performances, but he really does mean trick. Kyanston has studied his craft and literally suffered as his training stripped him of every aspect of acting masculine. He has the trick of creating the illusion of a perfect woman (for example, the five positions of feminine subjugation), without the skill of acting the part, and he is offended by the very idea that being born a woman would give Maria or any other woman any advantage in doing so. It is only when Maria and Kynaston discuss the tricks of being a woman versus being a man, after his life has been taken away from him, that he not only sees her as a woman but begins to see himself as a man. For her the key is her admission that she has never been able to do his Desdemona, not because it is mimicry, but because she disagrees vehemently with his premise that the character would not fight back when Othello murders her in her bed chamber.
This all sets up the grand finale and for me the last act of "Stage Beauty" when we get to the rehearsal and performance of the play is totally captivating. In one of the DVD features director Richard Eyre ("Iris") describes what we are seeing as the birth of naturalistic acting, which is exactly why I was so absorbed and why I know that those who have acted or directed actors, will respond to those scenes and this movie in different ways from those whose vantage point has always been as members of the audience. Danes shows flashes of brilliance which we have not seen from her since her death scene in "Little Women." But Crudup gets special mention here, not only because his role is the pivotal one in the story and because he gets to play both Desdemona and Othello, but because his character is put through the wringer and has to evince two different styles of acting.
Movie Review: Art wins over artifice, Crudup and Danes triumph
Summary: 5 Stars
"Stage Beauty" succeeds beautifully in what any good period piece does, whether set 300 years ago or 300 years from now. It takes us into that setting, finds evocative characters, and has them bring up plot matters that resonate. With us, that is ... not necessarily with those actually living in the time depicted.
I say this because the central element of the story has been described as unbelievable or unconvincing by some critics. Ned Kynaston (Billy Crudup), at the end of his run in playing female parts, is pulled from personal and professional despair through the insight and love of Maria (Claire Danes), his dresser and successor -- and they create a triumph out of this by bringing some real emotion to the Restoration stage.
This has been decried as bringing Method acting to the 17th Century. It's nothing of the kind. Innovation is made during a fertile, provocative period of history. It did take 250 years to get away from excess artifice and gesture on stage. Yet "Stage Beauty" makes you believe that these characters could have accomplished it in the 1660s.
If you can live with that, showing a success on stage that we can believe, even if it couldn't "actually have happened" ... then you'll enjoy this story. I was riveted by the way Ned and Maria turn their mutual fortunes around. So was Rupert Everett's wryly spoken Charles II, and so, perhaps, will you.
The story centers on Ned's withering and growth in the face of adversity, and Crudup shows a huge range of emotions in carrying out this character's experiences. Complacency, haughtiness, sardonic amusement, appalled shock, tenderness -- but most of all, a crushing verdict on his own abilities, delivered before Charles and his mistress in a setting that only adds to his humiliation. I was taken entirely out of that moment in how I felt for him, almost an out-of-body experience.
Maria is the mainspring to Ned's watch face, and Danes shows her own range and depth of feeling. She takes the winds of celebrity, itself something new for that time, and runs with them. Though she's not past being bewildered by them, especially when her portrait is being painted.
Her suffering in the wings of several theaters -- down to Ned being abased before drunks -- shows many depths of love, for acting as such, for brilliance of technique, for Ned himself.
She almost never talks directly of love. (Hugh Bonneville's perceptive Samuel Pepys helps bring it out at one crucial turning point.) She shows her love to Ned, to all levels of him, without once actually saying so.
Their regard for each other transcends everything that is thrown at them -- from his raging self-doubt, to the royal court's machinations and violence, to her being obsessed with acting technique at the expense of creating passion and fire.
This is a story of words transcending gestures and artifice. The words win out, whether in backstage maneuvering, unexpected honesty (even from the King's mistress!), or gauging what can be done with a character. It's a brave new world of being direct, getting past evasions and imitations of emotions.
Danes and Crudup inhabit their characters. They're simply English, no question -- the accents are perfect. The Restoration physical settings are superb -- dark enough for post-exile, pre-Fire London, entirely believable for courts, stages, and back-stages. The score is evocative, with twangs of Scots influence.
Every element immerses us in this world, even with the acting paradigm shift noted above. One can believe in these characters and their difficulties, and it ultimately comes to matter little that this is the 1660s. It's a human triumph which is timeless.
Not every question of life is answered, for Ned and Maria, but you know that they're embarking toward a New World of finding out about themselves -- more metaphorical than the journey undertaken at the end of "Shakespeare in Love," but far more believable. Join them, and be sure you do so in widescreen.
Movie Review: Underrated Gem
Summary: 5 Stars
Comparisons between Stage Beauty and Shakespeare in Love are inevitablle. Though Stage Beauty is set about a generation after Shakespeare, both are love stories that deal with the conceit of a man playing a a woman onstage. However, Shakespeare In Love's high profile overshadowed Stage Beauty and more's the pity because Stage Beauty is the better film.
Ned Kynistan (Billy Crudup) has made his career playing women's roles and is considered by meany to be the most beautiful woman on the London stage. offstage however, Ned is deeply confused about his sexuality having been taught and trained from childhood to surpress anything masculine in him. His dressing girl Maria (Claire Danes) watches him from the wings each night mouthing his lines and stealing off to a pub where she illegally performs female roles to crowds interested in the novelty. When the king (Rupert Everett) proclaims that women's roles are to be played by women Ned is suddenly out of a job and Maria takes his place as the toast of the theater world.
All Ned knows is how to mimic a woman. All Maria knows of acting she learned from Ned. Therefore we see her mimic his exaggerated gestures- but coming from a woman they seem false and artificial. Maria comes to fear that she is not an actress but a novelty. Meanwhile Ned is unable to play men, having worked his whole life at being feminine. It takes a few intervening parties including the king and his mistress Nell Gwynn to show Ned and Maria that they are the ones to help each other. We see Ned and Maria stumble into a romance born on the ground of initial fondness and combined with jealousy and resentment. When they perform the death scene from Othello, all of these come into play with the actors as well as the chatacters they play. When Ned attacks Maria for attempting to do something that he'd spent his whole life training to do, she freely admits that she had no teacher but she had less need of practice- she is able to understand what it is to be a woman based on experience, not soley on observation: something that will be her greatest asset as an actress. She also asserts that Ned's formal training left him trapped in a man's body that he has no idea how to inhabit. Every word is true and Ned must struggle to form an identity regardless of whether it is masculine or feminine. He needs to learn to be a person separate from the roles he plays.
All of the performances are good but Crudup and Danes stand out in their roles. Crudup is given a difficult task: to portray a man, raised as a woman and then rejected as one. He's left as a man, which he doesn't know how to be. His walk is affected with a swing in his hips, his voice approaches a falsetto even when he's not in character. Danes has proven herself to be a highly skilled and innately gifted actors many times. She proved adept at Shakespeare's language in Romeo + Juliet, so it's all the more amusing to watch Maria stumble through Shakespeare's lines and put on artificial airs. At the same time she's legitimately in pain; acting is her passion but she struggles with the knowledge that she's terrible at it. Both Danes and Crudup have to play actors- in other words they must play Ned and Maria playing Othello and Desemona. It's a rough thing to do but they pull it off on all levels.
Based on a stage play the dialogue is witty, and Richard Eyre's direction is more than able. The costumes and the scenery are lovely, but unlike in many period films they are not the show. That belongs to the actors, the dialogue and the story.
Movie Review: the birth of modern acting & other rare delights
Summary: 5 Stars
this movie is wonderful--- if u love the theatre and acting its a sheer delight---- thanks to a jolly old diarist in jolly old englands 1600s--samuel pepys -- who is portrayed herein-we have details abounding re the period and its live theatre--- at the start of the movie-- only men are allowed to play female roles-- by law ! and so we meet the consumate desdemonia of the time-- portrayed well by crudup-- the acting style was a bit stilted-- in those days---- much as acting was in our own early silent movies--- things were ` acted out ` emotions etc a bit exagerated--- during the course of the movie- the king ever in search of new sensations as they were w their outsized and never denyed appetites ! upon hearing of a remote performance of othello played w a woman as desdemona-- and it being quite a success-- he changes the law-- and from there on- only women can play women !! putting a lot of dandy men out of work--esp crudup-- his dresser played so well by clare danes-- is the new actress ! when he finds out he feels really betrayed-- there are fine scenes wherein we see how much clare loves the crudup character-- and acts out his every word and gesture as desdemona offstage-- only to repeat it w great success in a pub---- after the law is changed she becomes desdemona w crudup giving her acting lessons-- this is where the miracle of the movie begins---- they rehearse-- she is desdemona he is othello---he exhorts her to be more real-- the rehearsal is thrilling esp for crudup-- as u see him realize he can play a man-- which he has never done --& she reaches a new level of acting in this brief scene--- crudup goes to the manager who previously played othello-- and insists that he be othello-- crudup-- to her desdemona-- the manager agrees-- what follows is a rare moment in film--- what these actors accomplish in front of the audience who w us sees an actress onstage for their first time--is the birth of a new level of reality portrayed onstage- the final scene between othello and desdemona-- wherein he kills her----- appears so real -- we and the audience in the movie actually think he may have killed her for real-- it`s so convincing it takes yer breath away-- as it does the audience in the movie---- the audience knows they have witnessed not only a first in seeing an actress ! but shakespeare performed more realistically than ever before-- as opposed to the earlier more stilted version w the men--and it is so that a fine movie ends with quite a payoff ! it is said that when brando first appeared on broadway audiences were similarly treated to something never seen before-- real emotions done so convincingly yet still theatrically ! its like a mass epiphany and a delight- unheard of before! it is what happens every now and then in the theatre or any of the arts----- something so new so vital it touches a chord never before touched in us---- our very souls are revealed to us in newer and greater measure than ever before--- and this is why this movie truly transcends itself-- for recording this---for revealing it--- in this setting -- 17th century bawdy old england-- inventing a theatre that to this day continues every now and then to amaze and delight and re invent itself ! the extras on the dvd are excellent too--- the directors comments are an added treat as we learn much more about this totally worthy and successful endeavor---- & compared to most of the crap that comes out of hollywood-- this should get 10 stars ! bravo indeed !! a gorgeous production and a pleasure to behold !Movie Review: Better than "Shakespeare in Love."
Summary: 5 Stars
"Stage Beauty" suffered unfairly from having been released in the wake of "Shakespeare in Love." The earlier film had already won the Best Picture Oscar, and suffered a critical and public backlash because it beat out the more deeply admired "Saving Private Ryan." So no one was in the mood for another gender-bending romantic comedy set in the theater world of Merrie Olde England. "Stage Beauty" even shared some cast members in common with "Shakespeare in Love" (Tom Wilkinson, Rupert Everett) and lacked the imprimatur of a screenplay co-written by Tom Stoppard. All this is background for saying that "Stage Beauty" was unfairly ignored on its first release, because it's every bit as elegant, funny and engrossing as "Shakespeare in Love," and more poignant and profound in the bargain. Director Richard Eyre and screenwriter Jeffrey Hatcher create a magical fiction based on the true-life story of Edward Kynaston, an actor celebrated for playing female leads on the Restoration stage, who suddenly found himself out of a job when King Charles II decreed that women, not men, should play women's roles. History tells us that Kynaston soon switched to men's roles and regained his stardom; "Stage Beauty" contrives to tell us how he accomplished this, and the difficulties he met along the way. As played by Billy Crudup, Kynaston is insufferably arrogant--particularly toward women, whom he feels he knows far better than they do themselves--but his arrogance hides a deeper insecurity about his identity, sexual and otherwise, and his place in the world. Of course the King's decree shatters his world, and it's up to Maria (Claire Danes)--his once-mocked dresser, now a major star--to help him find his way back. Besides having many witty and thoughtful things to say about gender roles in theater and society, "Stage Beauty" presents a believable scenario for the beginnings of naturalistic acting on the stage--once men and women were free to portray themselves, there was far less need for posturing. The ensemble cast of "Stage Beauty" is at least as good as that of "Shakespeare in Love," and the leads are better. I had never paid much attention to Billy Crudup before this film; after seeing it, I'd have to say he's one of the most underrated actors around, superbly skilled in voice and gesture, and capable of profound depths of feeling as well as witty banter. He's matched fully by Claire Danes, a radiantly beautiful actress of fire and delicacy. Rupert Everett--a master at playing fatuous, self-involved noblemen--is a stitch as Charles II, and Tom Wilkinson is his usual excellent self as Kynaston and Maria's boss in their acting company. Such admirable emissaries from British rep as Edward Fox, Ben Chaplin, Richard Griffiths and Fenella Woolgar also shine in smaller roles. "Stage Beauty" takes considerable liberties with history--for example, Nell Gwyn, a major character in the story, would have been only about 10 years old at the time "Stage Beauty" took place. But that shouldn't matter to anyone who enjoys a romantic historical romp, particularly when it's as masterfully done as "Stage Beauty."