“Stage Beauty,” the seductive 17th century drama
directed by Richard Eyre (“Iris”), is a witty and
absorbing story of sex, the stage and the actor’s provocative
infatuations with both.

Set in London, with Charles II restored to the throne after
Oliver Cromwell’s Puritan takeover, the film features Billy
Crudup (“Big Fish”) as Ned Kynaston, the beloved and
beautiful player of female roles, and Claire Danes as his loyal
stage assistant, Maria, an aspiring actress herself. Since
England’s men are trained and legally bound to act out
women’s roles, Maria makes her debut on the sly in a seedy
tavern. Swiftly, shabby Maria has taken a stage name, weaseled her
way into the royal palace and, with help from the King’s
puckish mistress, reversed the edict, robbing Ned of the only part
he can play: a woman’s.

The score alternates between lush, emotive violins and heavily
percussive Irish dance music, propelling forward the film’s
already hurried pace. Amid darkened backstage and nighttime
settings, there is a stunning play of light and shadow on the
colorfully made-up faces of the actors and audience, turning shot
after shot into rich portraits evocative of Rembrandt. The idea of
illumination, of visibility on the stage, is voiced early on by
Maria, who explains to Ned why she wants to take the stage.
“When you act,” she says “you can be
seen.”

Eyre also explores way the artist’s identity is
elaborately knit up in his art. The devoted actor does not know who
he is without his gestures, his costumes or while away from the
dusty dreamland of the stage. The conundrum of “Stage
Beauty” is that the freedom of the woman to act on stage is
at odds with the freedom of the man to play a woman’s role,
prompting a murky discussion of gender and sexuality. How is a
woman made? Is she created on stage, in the bedroom or on the stage
bed? For Ned, sex is between a man and a woman, but for his
sometimes lover, the Duke of Buckingham, sex is an entirely
theatrical role-play between him and Ned’s character. Crudup
is initially most riveting when he plays a woman, both onstage and
off. But as Ned’s confidence begins to falter, Crudup
intensifies an otherwise petulant role with determined
desperation.

The film has been edited extensively, making Maria’s rise
to fame and Ned’s fall from it abrupt. Like a Shakespearian
play, whose plot is known in advance, it is not so much the
narrative of “Stage Beauty” that engages the audience,
but the overwhelming beauty of the dramatic details unfolding on
screen. Danes’s blunt, boyish face, as bare and plain in its
expressiveness as her voice, which lends her character a lack of
credibility. Bounded by a troupe of capable British actors,
including Tom Wilkinson, Richard Griffiths and Ben Chaplin, Danes
holds her own impressively, though for a lower class stagehand, her
accent is awfully posh. Nonetheless, it is her Maria, in love with
Ned from the start, who initiates the captivating, if predictable,
conclusion of the film. Brief bouts of period drama dullness aside,
“Stage Beauty” is a dazzling, perhaps even sexually
edgy, slice of stage life.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars