Stage Beauty (2004)

A female theatre dresser creates a stir and sparks a revolution in seventeenth century London theatre by playing Desedmona in Othello. But what will become of the male actor she once worked for and eventually replaced?

Director:

Richard Eyre

Writers:

Jeffrey Hatcher (play), Jeffrey Hatcher (screenplay)

Stars:

Derek Hutchinson, Claire Danes, Billy Crudup

3 wins & 1 nomination.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Derek Hutchinson	...	Stage Manager
Mark Letheren	...	Male Emilia / Dickie
Claire Danes	...	Maria Hughes
Billy Crudup	...	Ned Kynaston
Tom Wilkinson	...	Thomas Betterton
Ben Chaplin	...	George Villiers II - Duke of Buckingham
Hugh Bonneville	...	Samuel Pepys
Jack Kempton	...	Call Boy
Alice Eve	...	Miss Frayne
Fenella Woolgar	...	Lady Meresvale
David Westhead	...	Harry
Nick Barber	...	Nick
Stephen Marcus	...	Thomas Cockerell
Richard Griffiths	...	Sir Charles Sedley
Zoë Tapper	...	Nell Gwynn

Storyline

Based in the 1660's of London's theaters, this film is about the rules of gender roles in theatre production, and means to change them for everyone's benefit. Ned Kynaston is the assumedly gay cross-dressing actor who has been playing female parts in plays for years, particularly Desdemona in Othello, he also has a close relationship with a member of the Royal Court, the Duke of Buckingham. One day however, the rules of only men playing women could change when aspiring actress Maria auditions as Kynaston's praised role, Desdemona, and soon enough, King Charles II decides to make the law that all female roles should be played only by women. Maria becomes a star, while Ned finds himself out of work. But after a while, Ned finds it in his nature to forgive Maria's aspiration, they may even fall in love, and Charles may proclaim women will be played by either gender.

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Plot Keywords:

theatre | actor | dresser | duke of buckingham | gender | 

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Taglines:

She was the first of her kind. He was the last of his.

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Genres:

Drama

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for sexual content and language

Details

Official Sites:

BBC Worldwide Ltd. [uk] Lions Gate Films

Country:

UK USA Germany

Language:

English

Release Date:

3 September 2004 (UK)

Also Known As:

Belleza prohibida

Filming Locations:

Hampton Court Palace, East Molesey, Surrey, England, UK

Box Office

Opening Weekend:

$38,654 (USA) (8 October 2004)

Gross:

$776,691 (USA) (26 November 2004)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Lions Gate Films, Qwerty Films, Tribeca Productions

Technical Specs

Runtime:

106 min

Sound Mix:

DTS Dolby Digital

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Inspired very loosely by true events, with many characters based on actual personalities from the seventeenth-century stage. Ned Kynaston did play female roles, but also played male roles before and after women were allowed on stage. He would have been 20 in 1660, when the first woman appeared on stage. Margaret Hughes (Maria) is supposed to have been the first woman to appear in a stage production, aged 30. She did appear as Desdemona in Othello, on December 8 at the theater on Vere Street operated by the King's Company, whose manager was Thomas Killigrew, not Thomas Betterton as the film shows. Betterton was a successful theater manager later, but was only 25 in 1660. Other characters also were not historically the age that they appear to be in the film - Nell Gwynn would have been 10.

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Goofs

When Kynaston refers to his stage performance and says, "I blame you for my death," he looks up at Maria, but in the next shot his head is back down.

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Quotes

King Charles II: My astronomers tell me that a star's light shines on long after it has died, even though it doesn't know it.

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Connections

Referenced in The Daily Show with Jon Stewart: Billy Crudup (2004)

User Reviews

Seventeenth-century Stanislavsky

"All the world's a stage," wrote the Bard, "and all the men and women merely players that strut and fret their hour upon the stage."

"Stage Beauty" is set in the world of seventeenth-century Restoration theatre, but the stage serves as a microcosm for life itself, and the roles played by the actors before the public mirror the roles they play in their private lives. The question is, do they create their roles, or do their roles create them?

Ned Kynaston (Billy Crudup) is an actor who takes on women's roles, since real women are not permitted to do so. He has been thoroughly trained and schooled in the then highly stylized technique of portraying women -- to such an extent that any trace of masculinity seems to have been drummed out of him.

His dresser Maria (Clare Danes) yearns to be an actress herself, but is prevented from doing so by the narrow conventions of Puritan England -- until Charles II is restored to the throne and decrees that, henceforth, real women shall play women's roles on the stage. A whole new world opens up for Maria, but it looks like curtains for Ned.

What happens next is pure anachronism: Ned and Maria are able to rise above the limitations and constraints of their era. Not only do they transcend their gender or sex roles, but they overcome their classical training and, in effect, engage in Method acting, a technique still three hundred years away in the far-distant future. When he teaches Maria how to break the mold and play Othello's Desdemona in a whole new, natural way, Ned becomes a seventeenth-century Stanislavsky.

But, by George, it works. Their performance of the celebrated death scene from "Othello" sends shock waves through an audience accustomed to pantomime and exaggerated gestures -- and it electrifies us as well.

Not since Joseph Fiennes and Gwyneth Paltrow in "Shakespeare in Love" have an actor and actress so shimmered and shone simultaneously on stage and screen. One hopes that Billy Crudup and Clare Danes will be remembered for their luminous performances at the 2005 Academy Awards.