FILM REVIEW: Matthew Vaughn’s ‘Layer Cake’

Posted on October 1, 2004 by admin

layer cake x650

By Ray Bennett

LONDON – In Matthew Vaughn’s cleverly made British gangster film, the thing crooks always overlook is that the criminal world, like the English class system, is made up of layers. It’s very dangerous to forget what layer you belong to.

“Layer Cake” is put together smartly with interesting characters and caustic wit, and it ranks head and shoulders above most recent U.K. gangster films. Vaughn, who produced “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” and “Snatched”, makes his directing debut and delivers a far more grownup piece of work than his old partner, Guy Ritchie, who directed those films.

Fans of crime pictures with a touch of intelligence will be well rewarded and box office potential is solid.

Daniel Craig stars as an unnamed and apparently smart individual who is living large on the proceeds of a carefully tended drug distribution business. Life is so good, he says, he can taste it in his spit. His drug-maker has a first in industrial chemistry from Cambridge and his minder, Morty (George Harris), hides his instinct for extreme violence beneath a dapper exterior.

layer cake sienna miller x650

The nameless smoothie is making plans to get out of the racket when, inevitably, a villain named Jimmy Price (Kenneth Cranham), from a slightly superior layer in the cake, requires of him a certain favor. It involves handling a huge batch of ecstasy pills and selling them on.

What our man doesn’t know is that the pills have been stolen in bloody circumstances by a flamboyantly uncouth person named Duke (Jamie Portman), who hails from a much lower layer. Soon the original owner, a very annoyed man in Amsterdam who uses a Serbian killer as his personal assassin, is on the trail of the stolen pills.

Also involved are a very well-connected middleman named Gene (Colm Meaney, pictured with Craig) and a smoothly groomed gent from the top layer named Eddie Temple (Michael Gambon). There will be much slicing of the cake and considerable bloodshed before one or another gets the icing and somebody is left with the crumbs.

Using London locations inventively, Vaughn and his first-rate crew, including cinematographer Ben Davis and editor Jon Harris, deliver a highly diverting modern morality tale filled with ingenious gags and nifty twists. Music producers Teese Gohl and Steve McLaughlin have put together a terrific selection of songs for the soundtrack.

Craig holds the center of the film very well as the smooth criminal whose grip on things gets out of hand, Sienna Miller (pictured) makes a fine impression as a sexy lady named Tammy and Gambon does a measured turn as a hood who has climbed to the top and improved his clothes and manners, if not his ruthlessness, along the way. And Meaney adds another to his long list of finely shaded performances. The affection his character shows to his guns is one of many effective nuances in a very satisfying film.

Opens: UK Oct. 1 (Sony Pictures); Cast: Daniel Craig, Colm Meaney, Kenneth Cranham, George Harris, Jamie Foreman, Sienna Miller, Michael Gambon, Marcel Iures, Tom Hardy, Tamer Hassan, Ben Whishaw, Burn Gorman, Sally Hawkins; Director and producer: Matthew Vaughn; Writer: J. J. Connolly; Director of photography: Ben Davis; Production designer: Kave Quinn; Editor: Jon Harris; Producers: Adam Bohling, David Reid; Executive producer: Stephen Marks; Production: Presented by Columbia Pictures in association with Marv Films; Not rated, running time, 104 minutes.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.

Posted in Film, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on FILM REVIEW: Matthew Vaughn’s ‘Layer Cake’

THEATRE REVIEW: Steve Black’s ‘Missing Marilyn’

Posted on September 22, 2004 by admin

Missing Marilyn x650

By Ray Bennett

LONDON – One night in 1955, a handsome stranger in a tuxedo delivers a bottle of champagne on ice to a beautiful woman alone in a seedy motel room. It’s obvious who she is, all blonde hair, curvaceous body, and wistful voice. She’s Marilyn Monroe, but who is he, courteous and charming and unforthcoming?

Missing Marilyn 2 x325The identity of the stranger is the final kicker in Steve Black’s slight but absorbing one-act play that relates most of the known facts about Monroe’s life up to the point she was having marital problems with Joe DiMaggio. Mostly it’s a monologue, with Marilyn relating the sad details of her childhood, her mostly tawdry treatment by men and what turned out to be thwarted ambitions.

What makes the time pass engagingly is the astonishing ability of Sally Day to look and sound like Monroe. The actress isn’t by any means a dead ringer for the movie star except for crucial moments when either still or in motion the likeness is uncanny.

In Black’s scenario, Monroe has retreated from the clamor of her growing fame, her marriage to baseball hero DiMaggio withering in the glare of relentless attention. That famous shot from “The Seven Year Itch” with her skirt blowing up over the New York subway vent has blown Smokin’ Joe’s cool and the bombshell already has a hankering for someone a little older and literary, Arthur Miller, say.

Some of Black’s chronology is out of whack, especially considering who the stranger turns out to be, but Andrew Crabb does a good job of making him solicitous toward the wounded bird that Monroe had become.

Not many actresses have been able to match Monroe’s ineffable screen presence but Day, sympathetic and sexy, comes very close.

Venue: The King’s Head Theatre, runs through Oct. 17; Cast: Sally Day, Andrew Crabb, Playwright: Steve Black; Director and designer: Jonathan Hyde; Producer: Joanna Hole; Lighting: Dan Crawford; Presented by i.e. Theatre & F.I.T. in association with the King’s Head Theatre.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.

Posted in Reviews, Theatre | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on THEATRE REVIEW: Steve Black’s ‘Missing Marilyn’

THEATRE REVIEW: ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’

Posted on September 21, 2004 by admin

cuckoo 04 2 x650

By Ray Bennett

LONDON – Behind the glass of her all-seeing booth, Nurse Ratched’s honeyed voice whispers a single word into the public address system: “Medication.” It sends a chill down the spine as the insidious power of Ken Kesey’s loathsome creation becomes clear in Dale Wasserman’s splendid play based on “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”

This is a crackerjack revival of the work that is best remembered in the form of Milos Forman’s multi-Oscar-winning 1975 movie. Jack Nicholson was one of the winners, and he stamped his personality as indelibly on the role of rebellious Randle Patrick McMurphy as Kirk Douglas had a decade earlier on Broadway.

It takes a brave actor to step into those shoes but not only does Christian Slater (centre top picture) step boldly up to the plate, he also knocks it out of the park. Slater’s West End debut is a huge success as, with the equally inspired Frances Barber as Ratched (pictured in the background in both pictures with, below, Slater and Lizzie Roper), he leads a splendid cast through a tightly coiled and fiercely energetic production.

cuckoo04 1 x650

Katy Tuxford’s clinical design sets the scene from the start, aided by vivid work by lighting designer Chris Davey and composer and sound designer Matt Clifford. It’s tough to pull off a play about a psychiatric ward of clearly wounded men that strives for laughs as well as deeply felt drama, but playwright Wasserman does it.

Directors Terry Johnson and Tamara Harvey keep it moving quickly as the patients who have learned to accept the cruel ministrations of their dominatrix nurse react to the arrival of a cheerfully rowdy newcomer.

McMurphy has been committed for treatment instead of going to jail, and he fully expects to soon be back on the street, drinking and carousing and generally misbehaving. When he learns that Nurse Ratched has the major say in whether that happens, his instinct for confrontation and rebellion takes on another dimension.

Kesey and Wasserman are dealing with major issues of freedom and the corrosive influence of conformity. The play deals with its suffering inmates with compassion and makes them humorous as well as pathetic. The players are all equal to the task, with Owen O’Neill as Harding, Phil Nichol as Cheswick, Gavin Robertson as Scanlon, Dave Johns as Ruckly and Ian Coppinger as Martini all creating distinct and memorable characters.

Brendan Dempsey is imposing as Chief Bromden, McMurphy’s inspiration and his savior, and Mackenzie Crook (“The Office”) gives the faltering courage of stuttering Billy Bibbitt great depth.

Nurse Ratched is often seen in her glass booth with the lighting set so that her heavily made-up face resembles a mask from Noh theater. Barber makes her both eerily seductive and hideously frightening in a wonderfully measured performance.

Slater silences any doubters who thought he might decide just to play Jack. He brings enormous charm and physical grace to the boisterous and disorderly McMurphy and makes the character his own.

Venue: Gielgud Theatre, runs through Jan. 26; Cast: Christian Slater, Frances Barber, Mackenzie Crook, Brendan Dempsey, Stephen K. Amos, Felix Dexter, Lucy Porter, Owen O’Neill, Phil Nichol, Gavin Robertson, Ian Coppinger, Dave Johns, Tim Ahern, Lizzie Roper, Katherine Jakeways, Playwright: Dale Wasserman, based on the novel by: Ken Kesey; Directors: Terry Johnson, Tamara Harvey; Set designer: Katy Tuxford; Lighting designer: Chris Davey; Costume designer: Dagmar Morell; Music/sound designer: Matt Clifford; Presented by Nica Burns for Theatershare Plc., Max Weitzenhoffer and Ian Lenagan.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.

Posted in Reviews, Theatre | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on THEATRE REVIEW: ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’

TV REVIEW: ‘Green Wing’

Posted on September 10, 2004 by admin

Green Wing x650

By Ray Bennett

LONDON – Victoria Pile’s outrageously silly and deliciously vulgar hospital comedy “Green Wing” picks up where it left off for its second season now running on Channel 4.

The show has the shape of a typical television medical drama but its mockery is much more than a simple spoof. Pile and her team go deep into Larry David and Ricky Gervais territory and attain a level of delirious surrealism to match the best of Steven Wright.

It employs fast and slow motion, dream sequences, slapstick and musical numbers to develop the Monty Python philosophy of “and now for something completely different” to another plane with single-gag blackouts and sketches that stay somehow within the boundaries of a plot-structured show.

The first episode of the new 8-part series found Mac (Julian Rhind-Tutt, second right) in a coma and, given the nature of the show, he was immediately dubbed Coma Boy while his assortment of weird and whacky colleagues took turns trying to awaken him.

Their methods ranged from the lovingly benign by Caroline (Tamsin Greig, left) to the seriously invasive and twisted by Sue (Michelle Gomez, rear). One attempt involved placing a harmonica in his mouth and pressing down on his chest in order to provide accompaniment for a blues song.

Dr. Statham (Mark Heap, right), perhaps the most disturbed member of staff, contrived to play a miniature game of ping-pong with the unconscious Mac while his totally self-absorbed friend Guy (Stephen Mangan, third left) brought in a kitten and threatened to kill it with a huge revolver if Mac didn’t wake up. Then the behavior got worse.

Still, Mac emerged from his coma, although his memory wasn’t what it was and Caroline seems destined to encounter more obstacles to her romance while Sue’s desperate measures toward a similar end are guaranteed to complicate things. Future episodes promise even more wildly imaginative tomfoolery.

While guaranteed to offend many due to the sexual jokes and four-letter words, the humor is savvy and inventive, and pleasingly free of the grotesques and bullying caricatures that mar shows such as “Little Britain.”

The players are all first-rate comedy performers and with its sharply focused self-awareness and a kind of lunatic innocence, “Green Wing” is on its way to becoming a classic.

Airs: UK: Fridays, Channel 4; Cast: Dr. Caroline Todd: Tamsin Greig, Julian Rhind-Tutt, Stephen Mangan, Pippa Haywood, Mark Heap, Michelle Gomez, Karl Theobald (second left), Sarah Alexander, Oli Chris; Created, produced and devised by Victoria Pile; Directors: Dominic Briggstocke, Tristam Shapeero; Writers: Victoria Pile, Robert Harley, Oriane Messina and Fay Rusling, Gary Howe and Richard Preddy, James Henry and Stuart Kenworthy; Director of photography: Rob Kitzman; Production designer: Jonathan Paul Green; Editors: Lucien Clayton, Billy Sneddon; Original music: Trellis; Executive producer: Peter Fincham.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.

Posted in Reviews, Television | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on TV REVIEW: ‘Green Wing’

VENICE FILM REVIEW: Todd Solondz’s ‘Palindromes’

Posted on September 7, 2004 by admin

By Ray Bennett

VENICE – ‘Palindromes’ doesn’t seem to know if it’s coming or going. It’s a highly stylised piece of work typical of director Todd Solondz who renders wildly exaggerated sequences on a topic not generally thought of as a basis for comedy.

This one is a fable about abortion that follows a very young woman who goes on a quest for a baby she’s no longer capable of having. Solondz leaves it to the viewer to decide if it’s insightful whimsy or meaningless drivel. Box office will likely be restricted to the minority who plump for the former.

The story follows Aviva, a New Jersey 12-year-old who wants nothing more than to get pregnant. When the son of family friends obliges her, Aviva’s mother drags her screaming to an abortion clinic where things go wrong. Unknown to the girl, she is given a hysterectomy.

Unhappily childless, Aviva sets off into the world determined to have her wish. She soon encounters a family of Jesus-loving, right-to-lifers named the Sunshines. She also falls for a lummox named Bob, who prefers to have sex in a slightly irregular way that will not further her cause. Bob is also assigned by the Sunshines to go back to New Jersey and murder Aviva’s abortionist.

Clarity is blurred by having several different females play Aviva including various children, an obese grown-up black woman and a wan looking Jennifer Jason Leigh. To add to the palindromic fun, there’s also a kid named Otto.

Screened in Competition at the Venice International Film Festival; Production: Celluloid Dreams; no MPAA rating; running time 100 mins.

Posted in Film, Reviews, Venice International Film Festival | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on VENICE FILM REVIEW: Todd Solondz’s ‘Palindromes’

VENICE FILM REVIEW: Alejandro Amenabar’s ‘The Sea Inside’

Posted on September 4, 2004 by admin

sea inside 1 x650

By Ray Bennett

VENICE – Why does Ramon Sampedro smile so much? He says, “When you can’t escape and you depend on others so much, you learn to cry by smiling.”

Ramon has been a quadriplegic for 28 years following a diving accident and he wants to end his life. Alejandro Amenabar’s deeply moving drama “The Sea Inside” (Mar adentro) makes a powerful case for why he should be allowed to, and why he shouldn’t.

Jarvier Bardem, Oscar-nominated for 1999’s  “Before Night Falls”, delivers an unforgettable performance as a talented and caring man who wishes to die with a dignity that is lacking in his life. He will surely gain the attention of Academy Award voters when the time comes and he may not be alone as the fine cast delivers at all levels, especially Mabel Rivera as Manuela, Ramon’s devoted sister-in-law and chief caregiver.

With splendid production values and a universally touching theme, the picture should find receptive audiences in all territories. Amenabar cowrote the intelligent screenplay with Mateo Gill and also provided the atmospheric music with a little help from Carlos Nunez. The result is a film both poetic and profound.

Based on real events, Amenabar shows us how a vigorous and adventurous man is rendered virtually helpless and makes a persuasive argument for why that helplessness denies him a dignified existence, dependent as he is on his selflessly devoted family.

Bardem, a strapping actor, is made to look older and incapacitated not only by fine work by makeup specialist Jo Allen but by the actor’s extraordinary ability to inhabit the character. The constant smile masks grief and anger and while Ramon can snap at his young nephew for getting his grammar wrong and be impatient with visitors he thinks are there for their own purposes, he remains a compassionate and loving man.

We find him in the care of his sister-in-law, the quite magnificent Mabel Rivera, at the home of his brother Jose (played wonderfully by Celso Bugallo), where he has access to a computer, telephone and television that he controls with his mouth and a stick. He is petitioning the Spanish government to allow him to commit suicide and has the help of an organization devoted to supporting that right, represented by the vivacious Gene (Clara Segura).

Gene brings in a lawyer to make Ramon’s case. She is an elegantly beautiful woman named Julia, played with exquisite calm by Belen Rueda (pictured with Bardem). Julia has a degenerative disease and Ramon believes her affliction will allow her to represent him more forcefully. Also into his life comes a stranger named Rosa, played without guile by Lola Duenas, who has seen him on television and falls in love with him.

But Ramon falls in love with Julia, even though she is married, and together they plan a book of poems that he wrote when he was younger. None of this, however, causes any wavering in his determination to die.

For a film that will move audiences to tears, there are moments of great humor and wonderful sequences when Ramon’s imagination allows him to take flight. The film will be taken as a plea for euthanasia, and it is that, but also it makes the case for those left behind and demonstrates that love, not dying, can be the greatest test of all.

Venue: Venice International Film Festival, In Competition; Cast: Javier Bardem, Belen Rueda, Lola Duenas, Mabel Rivera, Celso Bugallo, Clara Segura, Joan Dalmau, Alberto Jiminez, Francesc Garrido, Tamar Novas, Jose Ma Pou, Alberto Amarilla; Director: Alejandro Amenabar; Producers: Fernando Bovaira, Alejandra Amenabar; Screenwriters: Alejandro Amenabar, Mateo Gil; Director of photography: Javier Aguirresarobe; Art director: Benjamin Fernandez; Sound: Ricardo  Steinberg; Wardrobe: Sonia Grande; Special makeup design: Jo Allen; Music: Alejandro Amenabar with the special collaboration of Carlos Nunez; Sogepaq presents a Sogecine Himinoptero Production in co-production with UGC Images and Eyescreen with the collaboration of TVE, Canal+, TVG, FilmanovaInvest and the support of Eurimages/ICAA Not rated; running time, 120 mins.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.

Posted in Film, Reviews, Venice International Film Festival | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on VENICE FILM REVIEW: Alejandro Amenabar’s ‘The Sea Inside’

EIFF FILM REVIEW: Pawel Pawlikowski’s ‘My Summer of Love’

Posted on August 22, 2004 by admin

By Ray Bennett

EDINBURGH – A working-class tomboy on a moped with no motor meets a young patrician beauty on horseback in the Yorkshire countryside. They begin an unlikely friendship and it is no surprise, given the film’s title, that it becomes something a little more than that. But what could so easily have been a predictable and tired rehash of youthful Sapphic exploration turns out to be engagingly fresh not least because of the captivating performances of the two leads.

Box office prospects are not huge but the picture should be well received on the festival and art house circuit and properly promoted could do well on television. What is certain is that Nathalie Press and Emily Blunt are destined for greater things.

Press plays Mona, a sparky and quizzical young woman whose fate appears to be tied inextricably to her brother Phil, a petty crook whose born-again Christianity has made him empty their pub of booze and turn it into a place for prayer meetings. Rowdy and frustrated, Mona’s mood is not improved my being dumped by a crude older boyfriend. 

When she tips off her moped in a country field and opens her eyes to find a beautiful girl peering down at her from atop a horse, she is immediately curious. Tamsin (Blunt) has the lazy hauteur of the carelessly rich and her invitation to Mona to visit her at her parents’ swanky home is more like an order.

When Mona dares to accept, she finds a world foreign to her existence. Tamsin plays the cello, listens to Edith Piaf, and drinks red wine. She speaks of Nietzsche and Freud and worships the memory of her equally glamorous older sister who she says died of anorexia. With her parents away, Tamsin urges Mona to stay. They talk and talk and swear eternal allegiance as friends. 

That leads to tentative explorations of their sexuality, although these scenes are handled delicately and without the taint of voyeurism. Tamsin appears stronger than Mona, and they embark on adventures of revenge against Tamsin’s cheating father and Mona’s faithless boyfriend.

Meanwhile, Mona’s brother is building a giant cross that he plans to erect on a hill overlooking their village. He cautions Mona about behavior he views as reckless but falls prey to the confidence of Tamsin who easily reveals the frailty of his conversion.

Pawlikowski is working on ambitious themes having to do not only with the passage of youth but also the conflicts of faith and fantasy. Mona’s world is hard but she dreams of beautiful things like love and fidelity. Tamsin is well educated and spoiled and spins a fanciful image of faux nihilism and doom. Brother Phil’s attempts to fight his own violent nature are under constant threat. As the three begin to pull in separation directions this summer of love comes apart at the seams.

Some of the metaphors are a bit too literal but the director succeeds largely with his story and the surprises are convincing. Best of all the film has a great sense of humor and the young actresses exploit it delightfully. The scenes in which Mona reprises the devil’s voice from “The Exorcist” are priceless.

Screened at the Edinburgh International Film Festival; Released: UK: Oct. 22 2004 (Content Film); Cast: Nathalie Press, Emily Blunt, Paddy Considine, Dean Andrews; Director: Pawel Pawlikowski; Writers: Pawel Pawlikowski, Michael Wynne, based on the novel by Helen Cross; Director of photography: Ryszard Lenczewski; Production designer: John Stevenson; Music: Alison Goldfrapp, Will Gregory; Editor: David Charap; Costume designer: Julian Day; Producers: Tanya Seghatchian, Christopher Collins; Executive producers: David M. Thompson, Chris Auty, Emma Hayter; Production: Apocalypse Pictures, Take Partnership, BBC Films, Film Consortium, Baker Street, UK Film Council; Rating: UK: 15 / US: R; running time 86 minutes.

Posted in Edinburgh International Film Festival, Film, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on EIFF FILM REVIEW: Pawel Pawlikowski’s ‘My Summer of Love’

THEATRE REVIEW: ‘A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum’

Posted on July 12, 2004 by admin

FunnyThingNT_Desmond-Barrit2004

By Ray Bennett

LONDON – A shaggy dog story needs a captivating storyteller if it’s not to founder, and “A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum” is the shaggiest.

With music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart, it’s a knockabout farce in the vaudeville tradition verging on British panto.

Director Edward Hall has done a terrific job of staging what amounts to a French farce in Roman dress full of randy old men and delectable young women and driven by jokes as old as the coliseum.

It’s a swiftly paced romp stuffed with leering gags, salacious posing and silly pratfalls, and the National does its usual excellent job of making everything work around the edges.

To make it a complete success, however, it needs at its center a comic wizard who can make all the shaggy old jokes zing again. It needs a Zero Mostel or a Frankie Howerd, who respectively starred in earlier productions on Broadway and the West End.

Desmond Barrit (pictured), who plays the show’s ringmaster, a slave named Pseudolus, is a thoroughly accomplished actor and he doesn’t put a foot wrong. It’s not his fault that he lacks the spark of comic genius that would set the show alight and hold the whole thing together.

It’s left to an energetic ensemble of veterans to deliver on the opening number’s promise of “Comedy Tonight!” Sam Kelly, as Senex, the henpecked husband looking for a last fling, Hamish McColl as the slave Hysterium, and David Schneider as Lycus, the buyer and seller of courtesans, all bring energy and flair to their performances and keep the laughter flowing.

Vince Leigh makes an appealing Hero, whose desire for the luscious virgin Philia (Caroline Sheen) complicates the lust of every other man who wants her, including Senex and the bombastic warrior Miles Gloriosus, played with splendid swagger by Philip Quast. The beautiful Sheen best captures the sardonic humor in Sondheim’s typically clever lyrics, singing “Lovely” with a gorgeous blankness as if the job of being simply smashing was the absolutely best job in the world.

The troupe of dancers and singers who play the Proteans and courtesans, who have provocative names like Panacea, Gymnasia and Vibrata, are all lithe and talented and enter gleefully into the playfully sexy spirit of things.

The gags are all performed with a likeable nudge-nudge wink-wink and only toward the end of its two hours does the absence of a real clown begin to slow the show down. Still, there’s enough crowd-pleasing fun to keep audiences happy between the National’s more serious offerings.

Venue: National Theatre, runs through Nov. 2; Cast: Desmond Barrit, Sam Kelly, Isla Blair, Vince Leigh, Hamis Mcoll, David Schneider, Caroline Sheen, Jane Fowler, Lorraine Stewart, Philip Quast, Harry Towb; Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim; Book by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart; Director: Edward Hall; Choreographer: Rob Ashford; Set designer: Julian Crouch; Costume designer: Kevin Pollard; Orchestrations: Michael Starobin; Music supervisor, MD, dance arranger: Martin Lowe; Lighting designer: Paul Anderson; Sound designer: Paul Groothuis.

Posted in Reviews, Theatre | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on THEATRE REVIEW: ‘A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum’

THEATRE REVIEW: Simon Gray’s ‘The Old Masters’

Posted on July 2, 2004 by admin

old masters x650

By Ray Bennett

LONDON – Few things are more entertaining on stage or screen than watching two heavyweight actors match wits playing characters whose expertise is sublime duplicity. Peter Bowles and Edward Fox (pictured) go head to head in Simon Gray’s “The Old Masters” and while the play itself does not entirely convince, the players do.

They play real-life characters from the ’30s and although there are echoes of that time, little attempt is made to recreate the actual people. Fox is Bernard Berenson, a famous art historian, and Bowles is Joseph Duveen, a hugely successful art dealer.

They clash over the provenance of a “masterpiece” that Duveen wants to sell for a vast amount as the work of the artist Giorgione. Berenson, however, is on record as declaring it to be a painting by Titian and he refuses to alter his opinion. The play hinges on Duveen’s attempts to get Berenson to change his mind.

The setting is Berenson’s lovely villa near Florence where he lives with his long-suffering wife Mary (Barbara Jefford) and an indulgent assistant named Nicky (Sally Dexter), who is also his mistress. The two women both chide and protect the art historian and forgive him his diversions with the occasional Swedish masseuse.

It would be a bucolic setting were it not for the fact that Berenson is a Lithuanian Jew and the pre-World War Two rise of Italian fascism is an ever-darkening cloud. The growing threat of terror underpins the duel between Berenson and Duveen that might otherwise be merely fiscal and in that carefree way of the wealthy, almost trivial.

But desperate times lie ahead and Berenson’s reputation is something to cling to as much as the two women in his life. The stakes turn out to be equally high for Duveen.

Director Harold Pinter lets the story begin slowly as a representative of Duveen (an effective Steven Pacey) arrives with vaguely sinister questions to invade the appealingly bohemian domestic life of the threesome. The fun begins when Duveen himself shows up and the two men, themselves old masters of verbal battle, begin their highly entertaining contest.

As the two loves of Berenson’s life, Jefford and Dexter are much more than bystanders and they each help bring the plays and ploys of the two men into sharp perspective. Bowles plays Duveen as a slick operator whose charm will win over most and he appears almost reluctant to win the day against a cherished friend, even if losing might ruin him.

The show belongs to Fox, however, who has grown convincingly into the very image of the upper class Englishman whose voice drips sarcasm, erudition and guile with every syllable. It’s a long way from the assassin of “The Day of the Jackal” and, in truth, a long way from Berenson, but when Fox commences a blistering speech, the feathers do fly.

Venue: Comedy Theatre, runs through Nov. 13; Cast: Edward Fox, Peter Bowles, Barbara Jefford, Sally Dexter, Steven Pacey; Director: Harold Pinter; Set designer: Eileen Duss; Costume designer: Dany Everett; Lighting designer: Mick Huges; Sound designer: John Leonard for Aura Sound; A Birmingham Repertory Theatre Production presented by Greg Ripley-Duggan with Duveen Productions and Ted Tulchin.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter. Photo by Tristram Kenton.

Posted in Reviews, Theatre | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on THEATRE REVIEW: Simon Gray’s ‘The Old Masters’

THEATRE REVIEW: ‘Beautiful and Damned’ musical

Posted on June 15, 2004 by admin

beautiful and damned

By Ray Bennett

LONDON – Such is the current taste for musicals built around well-known pop songs that one with larger ambitions, such as “Beautiful and Damned,” comes as a surprise.

If what you seek from a musical is to be able to leave humming an instantly catchy tune, then this one is not for you but it remains sumptuous entertainment with fine performances, splendid song-and-dance numbers and gorgeous design and costumes.

Kit Hesketh Harvey’s book draws on popular knowledge of ’20s writer F. Scott Fitzgerald (Michael Praed) and his wife and muse Zelda (Helen Anker, pictured with Praed). He becomes, as someone says, America’s greatest novelist and she becomes America’s greatest novelty. They meet when Zelda is 18, a Southern belle who is “the provocative center of every party.” Scott is from Eastern stock with poetry in his soul and alcohol in every other body part.

We follow as they marry and take off on a whirlwind journey that is part moveable feast and part giant bender as Fitzgerald’s novels reflect the giddiness of the Jazz Age. From the suffocating South to the freedoms of Paris and the Riviera, we see American ex-pats at play and meet the likes of Ernest Hemingway.

It is all framed in the context of a heartbroken and bewildered Zelda locked up in a psychiatric institution grappling with the conundrum that her own writing talent may have been what made Fitzgerald and destroyed her. It sounds like heavy stuff, and it is. The musical numbers often spark out of deep drama and that’s not the easiest task for Les Reed and Roger Cook, who wrote the music and lyrics.

The lack of twinkling melodies may ultimately doom the show but the songs are sturdy with evocative lyrics and they are well sung. Michael Praed looks the part of the dashing young writer as captivated with himself as he is with the beautiful Zelda but also as brutal as any self-possessed writer can be. Helen Anker conveys Zelda’s carefree spirit with zest and poignantly captures the warped path it takes to brazen exhibitionism and self-destruction.

Director and choreographer Craig Revel Horwood keeps a vivacious cast very busy with some big production numbers to balance the intimate moments. David Burt adds fine support as both Zelda’s father and a snarling Hemingway, and Susannah Fellows, as Zelda’s mother, and Heather Douglas, as a friend, catch the spirit of things nicely.

Most impressive is the look of the production whether it’s an Alabama garden complete with magnolia blossoms and Spanish moss, the Biltmore and Astoria hotels, Cap d’Antibes or Hollywood. They used to say that an audience never left a show whistling the costumes, but Christopher Woods’ design is so pleasing to the eye that it does almost make up for songs that aren’t quite as captivating.

Venue: Lyric Theatre Hammersmithm, runs through Aug. 14; Cast: Michael Praed, Helen Anker, David Burt, Susannah Fellows, Valerie Cutko, Heather Douglas, Katie Foster-Barnes; Original concept: Roger Cook and Les Reed; Music & words: Les Reed & Roger Cook; Book: Kit Hesketh Harvey; Additional material: Laurence Myers; Director and choreographer: Craig Revel Horwood; Designer: Christopher Woods; Lighting designer: Nick Richings; Sound designer: Nick Lidster for Autograph; Wigs designer: Richard Mawbey; Presented by Laurence Myers in association with Charles, Mary & Julian Dobson by arrangement with Really Useful Theatres.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.

Posted in Reviews, Theatre | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on THEATRE REVIEW: ‘Beautiful and Damned’ musical