Review of Stage Beauty (2004) by Shawne ~ — 11 Jan 2005

[b]Stage Beauty[/b] quite desperately hopes to be an incisive, innovative look into the male-female dynamic, at that key point in England's theatre history when King Charles II (played by a pretty much stoned and utterly unrecognisable Rupert Everett) decrees that females can now take on the female parts in plays. This leaves high-flying male diva Ned Kynaston (Billy Crudup) floundering in the wake of the royal decision, even as the star of his former dresser Maria (stage name Mrs Margaret Hughes, played by Claire Danes) rises ever higher in the theatrical firmament... despite her distinct lack of talent. As Ned's pride takes ever more humiliating beatings, Maria tries to prove to him that he can rise above his childhood training to be just as artful and professionally fulfilled playing a man's role.

The script is quite proficient in setting out Ned's backstory: he's revered in his profession, with fannish girls swooning after him, and dukes flirting with and/or bedding him. In a particularly memorable scene, Ned shouts that Maria does not know what he has suffered for his art, how he has spent years of his training being forced to eliminate every remotely masculine gesture from his repertoire. This is powerful in sketching in the background to the arrogant pride Ned takes in his work; otherwise he would just be an empty-headed prima donna, except male. In effect, his masculinity--at least onstage--has been leeched from him. Another great scene is when Ned, at the King's command, tries to deliver a monologue as Othello (rather than Desdemona). He cannot suppress his trained feminine moves, or voice, and quickly degenerates to low-brow semi-porn live performances where he entices the audience as a woman only to reveal he is a man.

Unfortunately, the one niggling point that keeps the movie from becoming a genuinely interesting study of masculinity (especially with regards to whether it's a question of nature versus nurture) is revealed in the stereotype mentioned by Everett's King. He derides the entire flock of male actors posing as women as degenerate, effeminate and sodomites. Oops--that's exactly what Ned is! As the movie thereafter struggles to make him the man it wants him to be, the kind of insightful character analysis that went before kind of falls by the wayside. Oh, there's no denying that Desdemona's death scene, as forcefully played by Crudup and Danes, is powerful and quite, quite shocking. But its point is essentially this: despite a lifetime of feminine gestures, one afternoon playing footsy with Maria turns him into a shouting powerhouse of a male specimen. (Yes, the movie tries hard to make you think he is also motivated by revenge, as Othello was--the same green-eyed monster that drove the Moor to kill. But as that eventually turns out to be not the case, the audience, or at least I did!, leaves feeling slightly cheated by the fact that Ned has become a man in about two seconds, after some thirty years of playing the role of his lifetime. Yup. Believable.).

This isn't to say that the movie isn't otherwise a fun, engaging watch. Some parts, usually involving Everett and his mistress Nell Gwynn (Zoe Tapper) veer so close to camp that it can't fail to be funny. Plot concerns aside, there's also no denying Crudup's achievement in this movie. He's really rather good when he's playing a man playing a woman, and has unexpected emotional power in scenes such as the aforementioned forced Othello soliloquy. His and Danes' explosive performance of Desdemona's death scene, teetering on the edge of crazed, ranks among one of the more memorable scenes of the past year.