★★★★★
Whether it’s Kim Carnes’ smoky Bette Davis Eyes or Joan Crawford’s notorious wire hangers, we’ve all absorbed the cultural echoes of these two screen legends. Now, Anton Burge’s highly successful play Bette & Joan takes us backstage on the set of the 1962 film What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and into the infamous feud between them. Full of acerbic wit and devastating fragility, the play makes its Australian premiere at The Ensemble Theatre in Sydney.
The infamous feud between Davis and Crawford was recently resurrected in Ryan Murphy’s FX series Feud, starring Susan Sarandon and Jessica Lange. While Murphy gave us the full campy grandeur, Burge gives us the raw nerve, up close and personal.
Here, directed by Liesel Badorrek, he moves beyond the mythology and the gossip, beyond the Hollywood anecdotes. He’s interested in the wounds that threaten to crack the polished public personas.
The play opens in darkness. A vintage black-and-white film reel flickers to life on the back screen, and immediately, we’re transported to old Hollywood. There’s urgency and energy from the start, with suggestive huffing and puffing in the dark before the lights go up on Crawford doing her famous calf exercises, her regimented beauty routine in full swing.
Director Badorrek holds this energy throughout, zooming us along from the first breath.
British playwright Burge has built a reputation as a masterful writer of roles for women, drawing on the lives of extraordinary figures from the 20th century. He first brought this two-hander to London’s West End in 2011.
Burge’s device is simple but effective: two women in two adjoining dressing rooms, their worlds separate but intertwined as they cut back and forth, preparing for the day’s shoot.
The device works to a point, though it lacks real tension for an audience waiting for some kind of combustion between the two. But the actors draw us deeper into their psyches, keeping us engaged until the satisfying confrontational climax.
The performances are breathtaking; electric one moment and devastatingly fragile the next. Jeanette Cronin as Davis and Lucia Mastrantone as Crawford are skilled veterans of the stage at the top of their game.
Mastrantone is beguiling as the Machiavellian Crawford, with pencil-thin eyebrows and toned calves to boot. She captivates with a mind-boggling rhythm, effortlessly playing with tone and pacing; her phrasing is almost musical as she switches between slippery charm and snappy demands. Crawford’s phone calls to Robert Aldrich, director of Baby Jane, are especially entertaining in their playful rhythm.
Jeanette Cronin, who played Bette Davis in her one-woman show Queen Bette in 2015, embodies the screen icon with her characteristic bulldog ferocity and blunt honesty. She is so completely immersed in the character that you forget you’re watching a performance.
It takes a moment to adjust to Cronin’s New England accent, the clipped transatlantic vowels and mid-Atlantic lilt, but soon the ear settles, and you’re pulled deeper into this backstage Hollywood world.
But it’s in the unravelling where Cronin is most jaw-dropping. A shaky, brittle fragility surfaces as she gets drunk and turns wet-eyed, quaking and threatening to crumble. Cronin heartbreakingly reveals the wound of a woman who has spent her life needing to be loved by men.
The play is full of wickedly delicious, razor-sharp wit. Lines like Joan’s perfectly aimed, “She was young back then, hard to believe I know,” arrive like darts you don’t see coming.
The play brilliantly shows the wounded fragility of the stars that threatens to tug and tear at the carefully self-constructed masks. There’s an excellent mid-play moment when the production starts to hit its heartbeat.
As Bette and Joan come together, facing off under the spotlight, Bette is rabid and bulldog-like, Joan all slimy sneaky charm, both powerful as polar opposites. The subsequent spiral into the drunken battle is mesmerising and gripping.
Director Badorrek and video designer Cameron Smith brilliantly incorporate multimedia elements. There are live screen projections on the actors as they look up to the spotlight and pre-recorded black-and-white footage that they interact with in real time.
These effects serve to blur the boundary between stage and screen and also create a time-travelling feel with the authentic black and white footage. The close-ups on the actresses’ eyes create a sense of intimacy, their determined smiles betraying pain and longing.
Lighting designer Kelsey Lee and composer Ross Johnston complete the picture with an almost eerie emotional undertone.
Set designer Grace Deacon’s simple mirror frames, sans mirrors, bring us up close and personal as the women speak into their reflections, all the longing, the successes, the failures, the fears. For women whose identities were built on image and the relentless public gaze, it’s a device that speaks volumes.
Bette & Joan delves into the cruelty of the spotlight on ageing in Hollywood and the devastating realisation of time passing. But beyond Hollywood, it asks, who are we as we age and who are we without the masks we’ve spent a lifetime building?
With electrified, powerhouse performances, Ensemble Theatre’s Bette & Joan takes you on an emotional rollercoaster ride. Once you strap in, you won’t want to get off.
Bette & Joan runs to 25 April at Ensemble Theatre. 78 McDougall Street Kirribilli NSW 2061.
Tickets: https://www.ensemble.com.au/shows/bette-and-joan/
Website: https://www.ensemble.com.au/
Socials: https://www.instagram.com/ensembletheatre/
Photo credits: Prudence Upton
