Dragging it up on Stage

Period romance, crossdressing actors, a capricious monarch and yards of the Bard: the comparison, inevitably, is to Shakespeare in Love. But one thing Stage Beauty does not share with the earlier film is its writer, Tom Stoppard. Adapted by the American Jeffrey Hatcher from his own play, Compleat Female Stage Beauty, the dialogue lacks Stoppard's snap and wit, and the story often loses control of its myriad themes, subplots and secondary characters.

Billy Crudup plays Edward ("Ned") Kynaston, a flamboyant, bisexual actor based on a real-life figure feted in Samuel Pepys's diaries. Ned is the toast of London for his histrionic, stylised Desdemona. But when King Charles II (a highcamp Rupert Everett) lifts the existing ban on women treading the boards and imposes a new one on men in female roles, Ned suddenly looks headed for obscurity as a tacky drag artist. Conversely, his stagestruck dresser (Claire Danes) is celebrated as London's first female Desdemona. Meanwhile, secretly smitten with Ned, she helps him carve a new role for himself.

Notoriously, Crudup and Danes left their respective partners to start an off-screen relationship while shooting Stage Beauty It's curious, therefore, that for much of the film, and despite barnstorming performances from the two Americans, their attraction is barely in evidence. The chemistry finally explodes in a violent and passionate version of Desdemona's death scene, Ned having apparently abandoned his bisexual urges and, equally unexplainedly, found his mettle as Othello.

Stage Beauty still has a lot going for it. Richard Eyre's spritely direction helps hide the holes in the plot, creating a vivid, raucous, underworld London of transvestites, whores and pickpockets, some played by a terrific supporting cast, including Tom Wilkinson, Richard Griffiths and Hugh Bonneville.