Austin Pendleton‘s play is one which real theatre history lovers will enjoy and even if you aren’t familiar with the main characters history and successes, the play is easy to understand and definitely worth a watch.

The play is set in 1960, as we discover Orson Welles during a rather sad, pill-popping deterioration who is struggling to find financial backing during the latter part of his career for future movies. John Hodgkinson is sublime in his role and effortlessly captures the spirit of a figure once memorably described as “the youngest living has-been.” However, the situation is not all doom and gloom largely thanks to critic Kenneth Tynan (Edward Bennett) who engineers an opportunity for him to direct Laurence Olivier. (Adrian Lukis). 

The two theatre conquerors first have to take on Eugène Ionesco’s absurdist piece ‘Rhinoceros’ at the Royal Court in the early 1960s. Both Welles and Olivier hated ‘Rhinoceros’ but they were attracted to it because it is modern and they needed that in their careers. As rehearsals progress, we observe not just a battle for theatrical perfection, but the repeated fight of their gargantuan egos. Whilst Olivier’s professional career is starting to take shape as he tries to build the National Theatre, his personal life is in turmoil – he is in the midst of leaving manic-depressive Vivien Leigh (Gina Bellman) for Louise Ford’s more dignified Joan Plowright. In fact, the audience learns that all of the cast are haunted by skeletons and are trying to shrug off the past in some way or another. 

Director Alice Hamilton has created a production which ensures the backstage comedy is appetising and the pick of the performances by far are Tynan and Olivier, played sublimely by Edward Bennett and Adrian Lukis, who blend their characters’ egos with their vulnerabilities in a way that makes them very enjoyable to watch.  Louise Ford prospers best as the young Plowright and what makes her so fascinating is that we know so little about her character and that is what makes her so engaging. 

The play itself contains an adequate combination of melancholy and derision, which is exactly what the story needs, particularly at the end of the play. Throughout, it is not short on humour and entertainment, largely thanks to the energy, which the cast bring to the production, both sides of the interval.

The audience constantly feel involved as they are integrated into the performance by the cast and with the staging in-the-round,  spectators feel close to the action and the conversations. At times it felt like we were snooping in on things we shouldn’t and as they rehearsed rather disastrously Rhinoceros, it felt as though we were taken back to that time and watching the artists at work ourselves.