All About Eve
Noel Coward Theatre, London
Three stars (though probably it’s one of those pesky three and half star shows)
A few years ago I was working at the British gay magazine Attitude – and the oldest member of staff. I was shocked to learn that none of my young colleagues had ever seen All About Eve. (Had I been wearing pearls I would have clutched them.) They couldn’t consider themselves true homosexuals, I upbraided them, until they had seen Bette at her iconic, magisterial best as the ageing Broadway actress Margo Channing.’
Apart from being a savvy, camp classic, the film earned a record 14 Oscar nominations in 1951, winning six, and is still the only film to get four actress Oscar nominations. But not only does All About Eve offer Bette warning: “Fasten your seatbelts, it’s gonna be a bumpy night!”, there’s the waspish dresser (Thelma Ritter), a jaded theatre critic (good heavens!) and an early glimpse of a screen goddess, Marilyn Monroe. What more could you want?
But now we have a stage version based on Joseph L Mankiewicz’s razor-sharp script, helmed by director du jour Ivo van Hove (View From the Bridge, Network), and starring Gillian Anderson, with Lily James as Margo’s usurping nemesis, Eve.
Given that this is an incestuous tale of not so simple theatre folk, it’s surprising no one has adapted the film for the stage before. Being a hot director, though, Van Hove takes his cue from the Gypsy song: You Gotta Have a Gimmick – or three. He’s thrown everything but the kitchen sink at the staging – and at one point you actually see on screen, via roaming hand-held cameras, a kitchen where flunkies make martinis for sozzled party guests – as well as Margo vomiting into a toilet bowl as the main scene plays out on stage. It’s a shame that Van Hove resorts to so much distraction – and PJ Harvey’s intrusive score is the worst offender – rather than let the dialogue speak for itself.
There are some neat twists: the box set raises for scenery changes to reveal all the backstage gubbins of the show – costumes on rails, discarded props and furniture – and large photographic portraits of Anderson that gradually change to those of James as Eve’s cunning plan unfolds.
Gillian Anderson has certainly proved that while there may not have been alien life, there was indeed acting life after her breakout role in The X-Files – with terrific performances in The Fall and War and Peace on UK TV and as Blanche DuBois in London and New York. Here she’s a laid-back, drawling Margo whose face we actually see ageing (via film) in the mirror as she imagine the future that beckons. Lily James eventually makes the most of a sneaky worm that turns, and Monica Dolan is terrific as Margo’s friend Karen – also the narrator – in a performance that really has the snap that’s missing from the production as a whole. The same could be said of Stanley Townsend’s Addison DeWitt, who is more plummy Orson Welles than George Sanders’ critic, an insidious, patrician snake-in-the-grass.
No one was expecting a replica of the iconic movie but Van Hove does seem to have given us a rather bumpy night – for all the wrong reasons.
Mark Cook has written about theatre, men’s style and the Eurovision Song Contest (so not gay) for the Guardian, Attitude magazine, the London Evening Standard and the Mail on Sunday.
