Customer Reviews
An excellent movie of gender and the theater - By: C. O. DeRiemer, 27 Jul 2007 
It's Londonin the 1660's when women were forbidden by law to appear on the stage. Female roles were played by male actors who were raised & trained for this specialty. The greatest of them is Ned Kynaston (Billy Crudup) & we meet him on stage while he's playing Desdemona's death scene. Maria (Claire Danes), his dresser, wants two things...to be an actor & to have Ned. When Charles II issues a decree that henceforth women only may play women's roles, Ned's world crashes to the ground. As he says, "Where's the artin a woman playing a woman?" Maria's world changes just as radically.
Stage Beauty is a terrific movie about theater & gender. Kynaston is a man who plays women who now must learn to play men. He's gay, he's straight, he's bi, & he doesn't think seriously about all that...only that he must act. Maria is a woman who wants to play women but only knows how to play men playing women because that's all she's ever seen. Eventually, Ned shows Maria how to be a woman playing a woman, & Maria shows Ned how to be a man playing a man. And while Ned's nature may not make him a candidate for heterosexual monogamy, it's likely that Ned & Maria will enjoy each other's pleasure & company for a while, as well as new fame. "Who are you now?" she asks him, after their triumph on the stage, she as Desdemona to his Othello. "I don't know, I don't know," he says, & they both laugh & kiss.
Crudup does an extraordinary job. He plays Desdemonain full costume, he plays Othello, he plays bi, he plays straight, he plays gay. He's believable. He has the looks, the masculinity & the screen presence to become one of Hollywood's pretty star leads like Tom & Brad & Leo, but he spends his time actingin New York & taking quirky screen roles like this one.
Claire Danes brings innocence, ambition & directness to her part, & is excellent.
The movie also is full of the kind of memorable character actors that only Britain seems to produce, such as Tom Wilkinson, Edward Fox & Rupert Everett. Richard Griffiths almost steals the show as an obese, condescending, malicious, superficial & lascivious old noble who becomes Maria's sponsor & winds up helping both Maria & Ned.
Love of language and theatre - By: pgagge, 21 Jul 2006 
Cross dressing Shakespearean actors on the Restoration scene. The eternal questions of rôle & identity. Wit & vulgarity. A scene-stealing Merry Monarch & his delectable Nellie. The bustle, filth & sheer energy of 17th century London. Not least, a light touch & clear sense of fun from the entire cast, with some outstanding performances. What's not to like?
I can live with the artistic license taken with the period -- at times, one gets the impression that Bardolatry was anywhere near as widespread as it is today, & the post-Brando acting at the end would probably have elicited boos rather than cheers from its audiences -- but anything true to its time would be alien to us. And, hey, the ever-iterated Desdemona death scene really does finally work!
On the minus side, the four-plus initial minutes of unskippable commercials & previews definitely robs this DVD issue of one star. Would that there were a warning system -- or better, that DVD producers recognized simple politeness as a selling point.
I just loved it! - By: M. Spilman, 01 Jun 2006 I am not a movie critic; therefore all I will say is that I loved the film from beginning to end. I enjoyed the characters, (their stories & complexity), the costumes, the story line... all of it.
It is a romantic, easy to watch film, which left me with a smile. I did play the last couple of minutes a few times... Billy Cruddup is very "eye pleasing", & so it is his female co-star, Claire Danes.
I do not think my husband would have enjoyed as much as I did. One for the girls, I suppose...
A gem - By: H. Lacroix, 26 Nov 2005 I didn't see that film at the cinema because of some bad reviews I had read! I should have gone! Anyway, now I have the DVD & keep playing it...
I had never heard of Billy Cruddup before & I thought him amazing. His acting is unbelievably good & subtle!
I quite like Claire Danes as well, though she is not as good, Tom Wilkinson is, as always, great & Rupert Everett is an effortlessly brilliant King!
Don't miss it!
it is so much more than well worth the watch!
Crudup's amazing, but the film lacks depth and chemistry - By: Daniel Jolley, 05 Aug 2005 As a general rule, I try to avoid movies featuring men dressed as women. In the case of Stage Beauty, though, the cross-dressing is built upon the historic foundation of male-only performersin the 17th century London theatre. Claire Danes sweetened the pot enough for me to seek this movie out. I can't say I'm all that enamored with the film, though. It is sort of artsy, the kind of movie that makes you feel like you're supposed to adore it - but I just don't. Billy Crudup turnedin a brave, amazing performance, but the story didn't completely click for me, & - I hate to say it - Claire Danes' performance came up a little short, as her character seemed to lack depth. Then there's the whole chemistry thing - basically, there isn't much of it to be found between Crudup & Danes, making the romantic angle of the story sort of weird & confusing.
As we all know, there was a time centuries ago when women were prohibited from performing on stage; instead, men played all the female characters. Here, Ned Kynaston (Crudup) is the most acclaimed "female" actorin 17th-century London, bringing the house downin roles such as Othello's Desdemona. Claire Danes plays his dresser, Maria. She studies his every move onstage & secretly performs the role herself at a nearby tavern. Kynaston finds out about Maria's acting debut at a royal dinner, but his attempt to cast calumny upon it backfires when King Charles decides to allow women to perform. Kynaston is necessarily a little unhappy about this, & he flat-out refuses to perform with Maria or any other woman onstage. Charles' little minx of a mistress soon talks (well, it's not really talking, but it does involve her mouth) the king into forbidding men to play female parts altogether. The celebrated Kynaston, "queen" of the London stage, is now without a job; to make matters worse, he's given a thorough thrashing by Maria's supporters. Kynaston, unwilling to play a male role, soon hits bottom - & it's really not pretty. Maria has a few problems of her own, as well; as celebrated as she is as the first woman of the London stage, she's not really a very good actress. Might it be that Maria & Kynaston need each otherin order to find success & happiness?
This movie is really all about Billy Crudup & his character. There's one particularly poignant scene wherein Kynaston tries to show how easy it is to play a man - & fails miserably. Kynaston doesn't want to play men because there's no art involvedin it, nor is there any beauty. He doesn't want to let the beauty die. He has spent years training for his profession, knows more about being a woman that Maria does, & feels utterly betrayed. It's a surprisingly powerful, emotional argument that gives the film a depth that nothing & no one else was able to supply. Of course, the most powerful scene comes at the very end, sending the movie out on a high note indeed.
Crudup is rather disturbingly femininein his female guise; Danes,in contrast, is somewhat manlyin terms of her actions & motivations. I never understood the feelings between their two characters; there's some kind of romantic flame winkingin & out somewhere, but Maria is far too unfeeling early on to make whatever passion comes later believable to me. Anyone with a heart would take pity on the guy when he loses everything he cares about.
I should mention that Stage Beauty is surprisingly risqué on several occasions - what with Kynaston having to convince a couple of admirers that he isin fact a gentleman, a lecherous courtier making advances on Kynastonin female guise, & a perverted king (and let me say, I hope I never again see a "king" dressed as a woman). There's only a modest amount of nudity, however (including one quick, slightly revealing shot of Claire Danes). There is also, I should mention, a kissing scene without any femalesin attendance - not my favorite scene.
In the end, my slight sense of disappointment with this film seems to come down to Claire Danes' performance. There just wasn't much depth there until the very end. I'm allin favor of women playing women, but I wasn't even sympathetic to Maria's cause. It's still a good movie, but I just think it could have been better. It's worth seeing, however, for Billy Crudup's tour de force performance, if nothing else.
