Superbly assured, but it’s All About gimmicks
DIRECTOR Ivo van Hove, who has a fetish for fizzy effects, for video usage and modernity and big names and zing, has certainly put his mark on All About Eve.
Yes, this is event theatre. It has Gillian Anderson and Lily James and it’s as cool as chilblains. It will be the talk of the chi-chi set. It will probably make a mint for its fashion-driven producers.
But is it maybe just a little bloodless? I’m not sure I cared remotely about the characters.
The turbulent 1950 film had Bette Davis as grand but ageing stage actress Margo Channing. She takes in a young groupie, Eve, and soon finds that this interloper is taking over her life. Eventually Margo is usurped by the ruthless Eve.
Miss Anderson plays Margo, svelte, glamorous, so selfish that her generosity to Eve is hard to believe. Where Bette Davis had a certain vulnerability, here we have near- perfection... except when (yuck) we see a close-up of the sick she has left in a lavatory bowl.
The walls of the boxy opening set soon lift to create a top screen on to which live images of the actors can be projected. Further back are chic interiors of various houses. It’s like a doll’s house in horizontal.
Technically, this show is superbly assured. Silky. Lots of toned bodies. Handsome Julian Ovenden plays Margo’s lover. Stanley Townsend, as drama critic Addison DeWitt, is as creepy as any I have known – and a lot better dressed than the mouldy creatures you see at today’s first nights.
Miss James starts to really convince when Eve flexes her claws. Her most important scene, when Eve blackmails a playwright’s wife ( the excellent Monica Dolan), is played out in a lavatory hidden from the audience. We have to rely on a video camera to bring it to us.
I don’t mind video usage altogether but it creates a barrier. The cameras filter out some of the emotion.
Gimmickry can be fascinating, as when Margo’s face is rapidly aged in a video time-lapse. But when done to excess, van Hoveian cleverness reduces the humanity in the theatrical experience.
This is a memorable production. It is done with tremendous panache and it confirms Miss James as a top- notch stage performer, and Miss Anderson as box- office gold. But they should have called it All About Ivo.