All You Need Is Eve.
Starring: Gillian Anderson, Lily James, Monica Dolan, Julian Ovenden, Rhashan Stone, Sheila Reid & Stanley Townsend. Director: Ivo van Hove.
673 cinema screens nationwide lift the curtain on 'Eve' last night. Live from the Nöel Coward Theatre in London's West End. Belgium avant-garde director Ivo van Hove's ('A View From The Bridge') revolutionary reimagining of the 1950 multiple Oscar and Bafta winning Joseph L. Mankiewicz 'Best Picture', 'All About Eve' starring Bette Davis and Anne Baxter lifts directly from the Cosmopolitan short story source text, 'The Wisdom Of Eve' by Mary Orr, but in its own influential and inspired way. Starring 'The X Files' and 'Sex Education' legend Gillian Anderson, 'Cinderella' 'Baby Driver' shooting star Lily James (good enough to play a young Meryl Streep in 'Mamma Mia's' 'Here We Go' again sequel reprise) and an epic ensemble, this powerful play of dynamic duelling, dual drama, note perfect backed by Mercury prize winner and cult Brit music icon PJ Harvey's hauntingly familiar, sonic score really explores the studio space. Showing that all the world is truly a stage-and we just it's players-as modern techniques of video cameras and epic editing take us backstage and behind the scenes for a story and film set in theatre that has amazingly taken more than a half century to find it's true spotlight calling moment on that very stage. But in oh how a way, as titan Tennessee techniques for a modern day Williams jump off the playbill, script and vanity mirror floor like a 'Cat On A Hot Tin Roof'. As a Hollywoodland golden girl meets the Tinseltown ready girl next door like a 'La La Land' city of vintage stars, timely for today redux. Our obsession with celebrity and our own mirror image of that reflected in the passing of time, age and grace is brought to made up, foundation frame here for a no concealer look at our own vulnerable humanities and lurking demons. Right on time decades later for this social media age where everyone is their own celebrity, filtered to the fake façade standards we seem to hold higher in the clouds than we do our morals, truth, or the essence of real, inner beauty that shines out. As the do your little turn demand for catwalk attention has shifted from being in Vogue with the fashion of magazine Cosmo covers, to the cosmos of Instagram feeds that starve perfectly beautiful young women of their striving self worth. A trend that needs to be reversed and may well be helped by this cautionary tale of caustic celebrity and the reality it leaves behind with time on the eve of all your enlightenment.
Surrounded by the flash of an in vain lightbulb portrait prison in reflection, 'The Half' refers to the half hour (35 minutes to be exact) that actors and actresses have in their make-up chair, unassisted before curtain calls performance before cocktails. A moment to savour of truth in front of that iconic mirror that already puts them in the spotlight. To mentally prepare and centre themselves for the moment in front of an audience lending their ears and hearts were they are hit by the real one. A solitary moment of solace, yet still in a contained confinement. Occupying the same make-up cage that Sienna Miller did in 'Hot Tin Roof' in London two years West. This void acts a dimensional gateway to another realm of consciousness. One that is aware of every blemish we try to factor out to the max. Showing how the other half of a plays performance lives. Because the lives that take stage here are never on their fictional stage in our reality, but the two sides that bookend it for these two Hollywood power players moving like chess queens. And just wait until the special effects of this anything but stripped down production for that theatrical medium come into play. And what they do as walls climb and pictures of fading portraits decline down to the faces of these icons young and older switching framed roles. Showing a synchronicity of symmetry in a karmic symphony akin to making all the same mistakes all over again. This technical theatrical wizardry is offset by the bare essentials of a scarf wrapped floor sit together to represent two people stranded in a car at night, taking it down to a more intimate, personal level for the crux of a crucial moment of third act catalyst. But in its video recorded backstage pass to another side of the most personality powered piece of storytelling around-that's only has a tad lost in translation as this stage is screened to cinemas-you get evidence of the real acted and directed smarts that go behind this medium over movies and one that reveals the raw truth of our own lives in reflection behind a cracked mirror that reveals all our bad luck and the scars they have left. Making us face up to this reveals are most intimate struggles that we have sweated and survived through, but still see in the lines of the passage of time. It's the most incendiary and influential slice of theatre we have beared witness too since that scratching like an itch cat made that tin roof too hot for us to stay on. This play is more real than the life we game on social networks, whether outside, or in our home hiding behind a different type of screen door. Filtering out and revealing who we really are and who we idolise to be. Whether in ourselves or vicariously through others, or real or imagined. Something as atmospheric as steam from a shower on our mirrors window pain, the one thing we can't swipe away. No matter how much we try to see through it all.
Scully sullied by an industry run on image shows the real maturing beauty that will never wither, as the bold and beautiful Gillian Anderson is perfect as Margo Channing. With Bette Davis eyes for style and the substance behind that old starlet, Hollywoodland accent that smoulders like her inner turmoil, curdling with rage as she knows her place on the stage is calming down. Soberingly drunk off the youthful ambition those in charge of her future are all the more hesitant to cash. The more she takes off her made up attire, eyelashes to heel toe. The more she knows this may be the last time as the girdle tightens like a vice grip keeping a choking hold on her future and the range of parts she gets to play. As a star who once had plays wrote and rewrote for her must confront the industry in the mirror that is as shallow as the water that makes up our reflections. Ever beautiful and with even more weary wisdom to boot Channing must channel these notions as tired as an old Hollywood still timely in need of a new tomorrow today into something much deeper, as Margo gets to the heart of what really matters as a young star nips at her heels like the shark critics who smell blood. Just like a sneering and sublime Stanley Townsend ('Florence Foster Jenkins') and his coiled viper of toxicity journalist, striking newsprint like he wish he could the ink of a sold out Broadway bestseller. But despite this old story shimmering to what the world of movies are still really like and what they revolve around behind the scenes today, the 90's breakout star Gillian is far from a gone girl like her most famous shows file new age reboot. The amazing Anderson just keeps getting better and better as the years fine like wine. Playing Eve to her forbidden fruit in the rotten apple of New York's Broadway, Lily James with a name destined for the bright flashbulb lights shall go to the ball. But with glass slippers she could learn a lot from this legend like her characters study. Although she is a legacy making icon in her right and light. Lily leaves everyone asking "whose that girl" as Eve. And here as the play plays on night after night she grows in confidence and poise of place with her character through all the naïve years and wisdom of Eve manipulated schemes. All for the fur and the diamonds and pearls this shining stars idol hides behind. But her demons are still afraid of their own darkness as the lonelier it gets at the top there are only strangers, or those who disingenuously play like best interests. One frock offering moment has Lily stance looking like she's about to jump into the abyss, rather than leap before you look off the pad. And oh what about the loved ones and co-workers caught in this dagger staring cross hairs of these two fencing stars. Some serving as exposition tied up and in narrators. Like the love of Julian Ovenden ('Downton Abbey' and 'Foyle's War'), caught between a diamond encrusted rock and a paranoid place. Or best friend Monica Dolan ('Witness For The Prosecution') the definition of tested loyalty in waters way over her head. Married for better or worse to a playwright Rhashan Stone ('Apple Tree Yard'), skipping between the margins of whoever is going to help his story tell and sell better. And if all that wasn't enough or too much, then we always have the national treasure of 'Benidorm's' Sheila Reid's brilliant Birdie for not only comic, but humbly grounding relief getting in her licks and making her point with style. All in all there is more about this powerful power play than Eve. It's an ensemble that takes on all its characters, traits and flaws to reveal all of that in us on the day before the morning after of our own self reflection. From Oxford Circus to Soho, London's West End has never been this obsessed with a vintage style being brought back as a new trend of celebrating celebrity in this reality show age devoid of the former and all about the latter. And when it comes to the eve of this Hollywood classic shows New York minute run, this is all Broadway will be talking about. TIM DAVID HARVEY.
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