based on the film by Joseph L Mankiewicz
seen at the Noel Coward Theatre on 18 March 2019
Ivo van Hove continues his project of adapting classic films for the stage, with Gillian Anderson as Margo Channing and Lily James as Eve Harrington taking the roles originally played by Bette Davis and Anne Baxter. His partner and collaborator Jan Versverveld is the set and lighting designer, providing the by-now familiar versatile and at the same time slightly alienating space on stage to replace the fluidity of film sets.
Eve Harrington, an apparently naive young woman, is besotted with the stage star Margo Channing, and graduates from hanging about the stage door to being Margo's indispensable personal assistant, masking a steely ambition to replace her idol. The frisson of the piece is to watch a mature star exert her social dominance in the theatre world while belatedly becoming aware of the threat; and to realise for ourselves what lies behind Eve's surface modesty and endless willingness to please. In this production Gillian Anderson portrays both Margo's brazenness and her vulnerability with consummate skill, though Bette Davis is of course a difficult act to follow even in a different medium. Meanwhile Lily James maintains an almost perfect mask of innocence until a crucial late scene in which her daggers are drawn in a nasty piece of blackmail.
