Stage Beauty
(2004, Rated R)
5/7/21
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WARNING: THIS STORY CONTAINS MATURE THEMES REGARDING SEXUALITY. READER/RESEARCHER DISCRETION IS ADVISED.
My first piece of theater experience came in the fifth grade, when I played the role of Kanga in Winnie the Pooh. The costume was sweltering, the tail alone felt like half my body weight, and literally 99.9% of my lines consisted of nothing but “my precious little Roo.” Still, I had enough fun to join as the curtain-puller for Charlotte’s Web the following year. My second came college, when I volunteered to help backstage for the December 2010 production of White Christmas at the Duluth Playhouse. If those times taught me anything, it’s that what occurs behind the curtain can be just as interesting, if not more, than what happens in front of it. I was reminded of this upon seeing what has since become one of my favorite plays superbly performed by the UMD Theater Department. I can’t properly discuss the story in play form since I can only experience it as such once, but I can discuss the next best thing: the movie.
Of all the “women” to swoon and scream and die on the 17th century London stage, there is no man who does so more beautifully than Ned Kynaston. Specializing in exclusively playing female characters, Kynaston thrives on the cheers of his bedazzled audience as the tragic Desdemona of Shakespeare’s Othello, as well as the attention of the admirers—both male and female—seduced by his feminine charms. But unbeknownst to him, his assistant, Maria, yearns to act professionally herself in spite of the Puritan law which forbids it. Word of her growing popularity from her underground tavern performances eventually reaches the ears of none other than King Charles II. So intrigued is he by the very idea that he decrees that henceforth, not only can woman now legally become employed actresses, but it will now be illegal for male actors to play roles of the opposite sex. This puts Kynaston in a terrible position. Now out of work and unable to convincingly act the role of a male, Kynaston’s career and social standing are all but destroyed. With the unlikely help of Maria, now London’s most prominent actress, Kynaston strives to reclaim his former glory on the stage by learning to act like the man he is.
Jeffrey Hatcher’s 1999 play on which this film is based, Compleat Female Stage Beauty, was in turn inspired by the extensive writings of Samual Pepys, administrator for the English navy and a Member of Parliament. In his private diary he made several references to real-life actor, Edward Kynaston, one of the last of what were called “boy players,” young male actors who regularly played females, and whom Pepys said was “the loveliest lady that ever I saw in my life:”
PEPYS: (Excitedly) Mr. K.! Mr. K., you were brilliant! Such eyes, such hair, such lips, and voice to thrill. Surely you were the most beautiful woman in the house.
That being said, Stage Beauty concerns itself less with historical accuracy than with engaging its audience—the very definition of theater. According to director Richard Eyre on the DVD commentary, the play acting within the film was actually an invented combination of the acting common in 1600’s Britain and Japanese kabuki, resulting in a style that is heavily expressive and reliant on gesturing and physical motion.
And speaking of heavy expression, there are few characters here that aren’t as dramatic as those upon the stage they so adore. I think their particular traits are lent further strength by the casting as well. I remember Rupert Everett best from his role as Oberon in Michael Hoffman’s 1999 adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream; he brings a similar aloofness, passive aggression, and love of personal pleasure to Charles II:
KING CHARLES II: Oh yes. You were in . . .
KYNASTON: Othello, sir, this Thursday last at Betterton’s.
KING CHARLES II: (Frowning slightly) Were you? Not Iago, I hope. I didn’t like him.
KYNASTON: I played Desdemona.
KING CHARLES II: (With recognition) Ah . . . that Kynaston. (Smiling conspiratorially) Late wife of the murderous moor.
Sir Charles Sedley may lack the blustering, short-fused temper Harry Potter’s Vernon Dursley was given by the late Richard Griffiths, but this is made up for by the same pompous and entitled attitude, with a girth to match:
SIR CHARLES: (With mock civility) We shall exeunt, Kynaston, but mark our history and my property. You are assisting my Desdemona. Don’t try anything funny. If you give her a funny voice, or a funny walk, a squint, I’ll notice, and I won’t like it.
But Kynaston is by far the most theatrical character, in every sense of the word. Being thirty-six at the time, Billy Crudup brilliantly puts both the “boy” and the “player” in his boy player protagonist, who in turn puts a rather promiscuous spin on the concept of method acting. Kynaston is extremely proud of his ability to use his apparent bisexuality to his advantage when it comes to entertaining his devoted fans in his female guise. But he is also selfish, spoiled, and narcissistic, going so far as to not only casually throw his groupies’ honor to the wolves, but immaturely prank said wolves with the hidden manhood under his dress:
SIR CHARLES: How much for the each of you?
LADY MERESVALE: (To Kynaston [in his female costume]): For honor’s sake, sir, assert yourself.
KYNASTON: (Demurely) Well, dear, how can I? I’m but a wilting girl.
[. . .]
LADY MERESVALE: (Desperately) Do something!
KYNASTON: Oh, very well. (To Sir Charles, pointing his fan at Lady Meresvale, Miss Frayne, then himself as he speaks) That one’s a shilling, that one’s a penny, and I’m five pounds a week.
LADY MERESVALE: (With angry dignity to Sir Charles) Sir, do you know who I am? I am Lady Aurelia Meresvale.
KYNASTON: (In a loud whisper to Sir Charles) She’s the shilling.
LADY MERESVALE: (Furiously whacks Kynaston with her fan) Oh, you--
[. . .]
KYNASTON: (Nonchalantly, still in character) I warn you, sir, I doubt you’ll find in me what you’re looking for.
SIR CHARLES: (Laughs confidently) I’ll be the judge of that. Now, come on. (Lifts Kynaston’s dress) Open up! (Stops abruptly as he realizes he’s not touching a female.)
KYNASTON: (Smugly, in his normal masculine voice) Found a guardian at the gate, did you?
Naturally, Kynaston scoffs at the idea of women acting. Like any other supposedly difficult task, playing a woman’s role is a man’s job, he says. (An idea Eyre laughingly calls “magnificently absurd.”) But this rejection goes deeper than the mindset of male superiority. Kynaston brags about all the training he endured and all the tricks he learned to “become” a woman, which he deludes himself into believing makes him a better expert on womanhood than the real thing, his “five positions of feminine subjugation” speech being especially cringeworthy. In his mind, there is neither skill nor novelty in a woman playing a woman, because a woman is what she already is. It is by becoming what one is not by nature that marks the versatile genius of a true actor:
DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM: An actress.
KYNASTON: A what?
DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM: An actress.
KYNASTON: (Laughs at the notion)
[. . .]
DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM: It was a girl.
[. . .]
KYNASTON: (Baffled) Wha . . . A woman playing a woman—what’s the trick in that?
[. . .]
KYNASTON: Do you know the Five Positions of Feminine Subjugation? [. . .] No? Perhaps you're more acquainted with the Pose of Tragic Acceptance. Or the Demeanor of Awe and Terror.
MARIA: Mr. Kynaston.
KYNASTON: How about the Supplicant's Clasp or the Attitude of Prostrate Grief?
MARIA: Mr. Kynaston.
KYNASTON: Funny, you've seen me perform them a thousand times. I'd have thought they'd taken hold.
MARIA: Mr. Kynaston!
KYNASTON: Ah, well now, there's a feminine gesture. You seem to have managed the Stamp of Girlish Petulance.
[. . .]
KYNASTON: [M]adam, I have worked half my life to do what I do. Fourteen boys crammed in a cellar . . . Do you know when I was in training for this profession, I was not permitted to wear a woman's dress for three long years, I was not permitted to wear a wig for four—not until I had proved that I had eliminated every masculine gesture, every masculine intonation from my very being. What teacher did you learn from? What cellar was your home?
But the new law strips Kynaston naked in ways that have nothing to do with costumes and makeup. It was as a woman that he had felt empowered and whole. When that’s taken away and he permanently becomes an ordinary man again, he is revealed for the sham he is, unwanted and unloved now that the illusion has vanished. What’s worse, having been what he isn’t on the stage for so long, he doesn’t know anymore who or even what he actually is in real life, nor does he initially have the courage to face that harsh truth. During the distressing scene in which the Duke of Buckingham, his secret lover, vehemently spells that out for him, Kynaston’s teary-eyed expression is that of a naïve child whose play-time fantasy bubble has burst:
DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM: (To Kynaston in a sudden rage) I don’t want YOU! (Calmer) Not as you are now. I . . . When I did spend time with you, I always thought of you as a woman. When we were in bed, it was always in a bed on a stage. I’d think, “Here I am, in a play, inside Desdemona. Cleopatra, poor Ophelia. You’re none of them now. I don’t know who you are. (Shakes a finger at him) I doubt you do.
His fall from grace is truly complete when he tries to recite Othello’s lines—a male’s lines—before the royal court, only for him to break down like a rank amateur with the worst stage fright:
KYNASTON: (Simultaneously mumbling and shouting as he struggles to say his lines) “Scars as smooth as monumental alabaster. Yet she must die, else she betray more men! Put out the light, then put out the light!” (His voice goes into a womanly pitch) Oh . . . oh . . . (his voice cracking) Oh . . . (laughs nervously, then begs King Charles II) If . . . I c-could give it . . . one more go . . . I . . . (breaks into tears)
And yet it is Maria—the new star of London, the one who had suffered Kynaston’s bullying and took away his spotlight—who remains his one true friend. Thanks in part to a pragmatic performance by Claire Danes, Maria is arguably the only real character in this entire movie. She wants to be a serious actress because it brings her joy, not to make her former master suffer, and she does show genuine guilt and concern upon witnessing his downward spiral:
KYNASTON: (With barely suppressed frustration) I can act a man. There’s no artistry in that. There are things that I can be as a woman that I cannot be as a man.
KING CHARLES II: Such as?
NELL [the king’s mistress]: (Disdainfully) A star.
MARIA: (Coming to Kynaston’s defense) No. No, I think Mr. Kynaston can be a star in any guise. (To Kynaston) If indeed there is no artistry in acting a man, then show us. Play a man for us and perhaps His Majesty will change his mind as to whether you can play a woman.
But she is neither a dumb fan girl nor a suck-up. She is the mother figure and teacher the childish Kynaston so desperately needs, not rubbing his failure in his face but unafraid to admonish him for his faults. As much as Maria wishes to emulate the skill of the man she admires, it is that very skill which fuels her frustration toward him. Even in his finest performances, never once had he portrayed a woman realistically. His way was that of a doll, airy and attractive but lifeless and unnatural. Just because actors pretend doesn’t mean their characters should; they should feel and act like the live human beings they truly are in all their real and ugly glory, not just toss their heads and “die beautifully:”
MARIA: (Upset) Your old tutor did you a great disservice, Mr. Kynaston. He taught you how to speak, and swoon, and toss your head but he never taught you how to suffer like a woman, or love like a woman. He trapped a man in a woman's form and left you there to die! I always hated you as Desdemona. You never fought! You just died beautifully. (Sniffs) No woman would, would die like that, no matter how much she loved him. A woman would fight!
I wouldn’t call Stage Beauty a paradoxical or ironic story so much as a story full of paradoxes and ironies. What could have been just a long string of Shakespearean-tongued gay jokes or a tedious soap opera among promiscuous British royals and stage play actors is instead a funny, evocative, and fascinating study of preconceived gender roles and sexual identity as seen through the surreal but enlightening lens of theater. Just as the Bard himself called men and women “merely players” on the stage we call the world, our parts and lines are constantly being dictated by the social standards around us. But oftentimes it takes more than a single role to establish one’s true character.
CREDITS:
All images, audio, and links belong to their respective owners; no copyright infringement is intended.
MAIN THEME:
“The Call” – Briand Morrison and Roxann Berglund
My first piece of theater experience came in the fifth grade, when I played the role of Kanga in Winnie the Pooh. The costume was sweltering, the tail alone felt like half my body weight, and literally 99.9% of my lines consisted of nothing but “my precious little Roo.” Still, I had enough fun to join as the curtain-puller for Charlotte’s Web the following year. My second came college, when I volunteered to help backstage for the December 2010 production of White Christmas at the Duluth Playhouse. If those times taught me anything, it’s that what occurs behind the curtain can be just as interesting, if not more, than what happens in front of it. I was reminded of this upon seeing what has since become one of my favorite plays superbly performed by the UMD Theater Department. I can’t properly discuss the story in play form since I can only experience it as such once, but I can discuss the next best thing: the movie.
Of all the “women” to swoon and scream and die on the 17th century London stage, there is no man who does so more beautifully than Ned Kynaston. Specializing in exclusively playing female characters, Kynaston thrives on the cheers of his bedazzled audience as the tragic Desdemona of Shakespeare’s Othello, as well as the attention of the admirers—both male and female—seduced by his feminine charms. But unbeknownst to him, his assistant, Maria, yearns to act professionally herself in spite of the Puritan law which forbids it. Word of her growing popularity from her underground tavern performances eventually reaches the ears of none other than King Charles II. So intrigued is he by the very idea that he decrees that henceforth, not only can woman now legally become employed actresses, but it will now be illegal for male actors to play roles of the opposite sex. This puts Kynaston in a terrible position. Now out of work and unable to convincingly act the role of a male, Kynaston’s career and social standing are all but destroyed. With the unlikely help of Maria, now London’s most prominent actress, Kynaston strives to reclaim his former glory on the stage by learning to act like the man he is.
Jeffrey Hatcher’s 1999 play on which this film is based, Compleat Female Stage Beauty, was in turn inspired by the extensive writings of Samual Pepys, administrator for the English navy and a Member of Parliament. In his private diary he made several references to real-life actor, Edward Kynaston, one of the last of what were called “boy players,” young male actors who regularly played females, and whom Pepys said was “the loveliest lady that ever I saw in my life:”
PEPYS: (Excitedly) Mr. K.! Mr. K., you were brilliant! Such eyes, such hair, such lips, and voice to thrill. Surely you were the most beautiful woman in the house.
That being said, Stage Beauty concerns itself less with historical accuracy than with engaging its audience—the very definition of theater. According to director Richard Eyre on the DVD commentary, the play acting within the film was actually an invented combination of the acting common in 1600’s Britain and Japanese kabuki, resulting in a style that is heavily expressive and reliant on gesturing and physical motion.
And speaking of heavy expression, there are few characters here that aren’t as dramatic as those upon the stage they so adore. I think their particular traits are lent further strength by the casting as well. I remember Rupert Everett best from his role as Oberon in Michael Hoffman’s 1999 adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream; he brings a similar aloofness, passive aggression, and love of personal pleasure to Charles II:
KING CHARLES II: Oh yes. You were in . . .
KYNASTON: Othello, sir, this Thursday last at Betterton’s.
KING CHARLES II: (Frowning slightly) Were you? Not Iago, I hope. I didn’t like him.
KYNASTON: I played Desdemona.
KING CHARLES II: (With recognition) Ah . . . that Kynaston. (Smiling conspiratorially) Late wife of the murderous moor.
Sir Charles Sedley may lack the blustering, short-fused temper Harry Potter’s Vernon Dursley was given by the late Richard Griffiths, but this is made up for by the same pompous and entitled attitude, with a girth to match:
SIR CHARLES: (With mock civility) We shall exeunt, Kynaston, but mark our history and my property. You are assisting my Desdemona. Don’t try anything funny. If you give her a funny voice, or a funny walk, a squint, I’ll notice, and I won’t like it.
But Kynaston is by far the most theatrical character, in every sense of the word. Being thirty-six at the time, Billy Crudup brilliantly puts both the “boy” and the “player” in his boy player protagonist, who in turn puts a rather promiscuous spin on the concept of method acting. Kynaston is extremely proud of his ability to use his apparent bisexuality to his advantage when it comes to entertaining his devoted fans in his female guise. But he is also selfish, spoiled, and narcissistic, going so far as to not only casually throw his groupies’ honor to the wolves, but immaturely prank said wolves with the hidden manhood under his dress:
SIR CHARLES: How much for the each of you?
LADY MERESVALE: (To Kynaston [in his female costume]): For honor’s sake, sir, assert yourself.
KYNASTON: (Demurely) Well, dear, how can I? I’m but a wilting girl.
[. . .]
LADY MERESVALE: (Desperately) Do something!
KYNASTON: Oh, very well. (To Sir Charles, pointing his fan at Lady Meresvale, Miss Frayne, then himself as he speaks) That one’s a shilling, that one’s a penny, and I’m five pounds a week.
LADY MERESVALE: (With angry dignity to Sir Charles) Sir, do you know who I am? I am Lady Aurelia Meresvale.
KYNASTON: (In a loud whisper to Sir Charles) She’s the shilling.
LADY MERESVALE: (Furiously whacks Kynaston with her fan) Oh, you--
[. . .]
KYNASTON: (Nonchalantly, still in character) I warn you, sir, I doubt you’ll find in me what you’re looking for.
SIR CHARLES: (Laughs confidently) I’ll be the judge of that. Now, come on. (Lifts Kynaston’s dress) Open up! (Stops abruptly as he realizes he’s not touching a female.)
KYNASTON: (Smugly, in his normal masculine voice) Found a guardian at the gate, did you?
Naturally, Kynaston scoffs at the idea of women acting. Like any other supposedly difficult task, playing a woman’s role is a man’s job, he says. (An idea Eyre laughingly calls “magnificently absurd.”) But this rejection goes deeper than the mindset of male superiority. Kynaston brags about all the training he endured and all the tricks he learned to “become” a woman, which he deludes himself into believing makes him a better expert on womanhood than the real thing, his “five positions of feminine subjugation” speech being especially cringeworthy. In his mind, there is neither skill nor novelty in a woman playing a woman, because a woman is what she already is. It is by becoming what one is not by nature that marks the versatile genius of a true actor:
DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM: An actress.
KYNASTON: A what?
DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM: An actress.
KYNASTON: (Laughs at the notion)
[. . .]
DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM: It was a girl.
[. . .]
KYNASTON: (Baffled) Wha . . . A woman playing a woman—what’s the trick in that?
[. . .]
KYNASTON: Do you know the Five Positions of Feminine Subjugation? [. . .] No? Perhaps you're more acquainted with the Pose of Tragic Acceptance. Or the Demeanor of Awe and Terror.
MARIA: Mr. Kynaston.
KYNASTON: How about the Supplicant's Clasp or the Attitude of Prostrate Grief?
MARIA: Mr. Kynaston.
KYNASTON: Funny, you've seen me perform them a thousand times. I'd have thought they'd taken hold.
MARIA: Mr. Kynaston!
KYNASTON: Ah, well now, there's a feminine gesture. You seem to have managed the Stamp of Girlish Petulance.
[. . .]
KYNASTON: [M]adam, I have worked half my life to do what I do. Fourteen boys crammed in a cellar . . . Do you know when I was in training for this profession, I was not permitted to wear a woman's dress for three long years, I was not permitted to wear a wig for four—not until I had proved that I had eliminated every masculine gesture, every masculine intonation from my very being. What teacher did you learn from? What cellar was your home?
But the new law strips Kynaston naked in ways that have nothing to do with costumes and makeup. It was as a woman that he had felt empowered and whole. When that’s taken away and he permanently becomes an ordinary man again, he is revealed for the sham he is, unwanted and unloved now that the illusion has vanished. What’s worse, having been what he isn’t on the stage for so long, he doesn’t know anymore who or even what he actually is in real life, nor does he initially have the courage to face that harsh truth. During the distressing scene in which the Duke of Buckingham, his secret lover, vehemently spells that out for him, Kynaston’s teary-eyed expression is that of a naïve child whose play-time fantasy bubble has burst:
DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM: (To Kynaston in a sudden rage) I don’t want YOU! (Calmer) Not as you are now. I . . . When I did spend time with you, I always thought of you as a woman. When we were in bed, it was always in a bed on a stage. I’d think, “Here I am, in a play, inside Desdemona. Cleopatra, poor Ophelia. You’re none of them now. I don’t know who you are. (Shakes a finger at him) I doubt you do.
His fall from grace is truly complete when he tries to recite Othello’s lines—a male’s lines—before the royal court, only for him to break down like a rank amateur with the worst stage fright:
KYNASTON: (Simultaneously mumbling and shouting as he struggles to say his lines) “Scars as smooth as monumental alabaster. Yet she must die, else she betray more men! Put out the light, then put out the light!” (His voice goes into a womanly pitch) Oh . . . oh . . . (his voice cracking) Oh . . . (laughs nervously, then begs King Charles II) If . . . I c-could give it . . . one more go . . . I . . . (breaks into tears)
And yet it is Maria—the new star of London, the one who had suffered Kynaston’s bullying and took away his spotlight—who remains his one true friend. Thanks in part to a pragmatic performance by Claire Danes, Maria is arguably the only real character in this entire movie. She wants to be a serious actress because it brings her joy, not to make her former master suffer, and she does show genuine guilt and concern upon witnessing his downward spiral:
KYNASTON: (With barely suppressed frustration) I can act a man. There’s no artistry in that. There are things that I can be as a woman that I cannot be as a man.
KING CHARLES II: Such as?
NELL [the king’s mistress]: (Disdainfully) A star.
MARIA: (Coming to Kynaston’s defense) No. No, I think Mr. Kynaston can be a star in any guise. (To Kynaston) If indeed there is no artistry in acting a man, then show us. Play a man for us and perhaps His Majesty will change his mind as to whether you can play a woman.
But she is neither a dumb fan girl nor a suck-up. She is the mother figure and teacher the childish Kynaston so desperately needs, not rubbing his failure in his face but unafraid to admonish him for his faults. As much as Maria wishes to emulate the skill of the man she admires, it is that very skill which fuels her frustration toward him. Even in his finest performances, never once had he portrayed a woman realistically. His way was that of a doll, airy and attractive but lifeless and unnatural. Just because actors pretend doesn’t mean their characters should; they should feel and act like the live human beings they truly are in all their real and ugly glory, not just toss their heads and “die beautifully:”
MARIA: (Upset) Your old tutor did you a great disservice, Mr. Kynaston. He taught you how to speak, and swoon, and toss your head but he never taught you how to suffer like a woman, or love like a woman. He trapped a man in a woman's form and left you there to die! I always hated you as Desdemona. You never fought! You just died beautifully. (Sniffs) No woman would, would die like that, no matter how much she loved him. A woman would fight!
I wouldn’t call Stage Beauty a paradoxical or ironic story so much as a story full of paradoxes and ironies. What could have been just a long string of Shakespearean-tongued gay jokes or a tedious soap opera among promiscuous British royals and stage play actors is instead a funny, evocative, and fascinating study of preconceived gender roles and sexual identity as seen through the surreal but enlightening lens of theater. Just as the Bard himself called men and women “merely players” on the stage we call the world, our parts and lines are constantly being dictated by the social standards around us. But oftentimes it takes more than a single role to establish one’s true character.
CREDITS:
All images, audio, and links belong to their respective owners; no copyright infringement is intended.
MAIN THEME:
“The Call” – Briand Morrison and Roxann Berglund
EPISODE SONG:
“Dying to Show You” - Sean Zarn
“Dying to Show You” - Sean Zarn
All other music and sound clips are from Stage Beauty (directed by Richard Eyre; production by Lionsgate and Qwerty Films; distribution by Lionsgate.)
Download the full 15-minute episode here!
Stage Beauty on Wikipedia
Stage Beauty on IMDb
Stage Beauty on Rotten Tomatoes
Stage Beauty on Metacritic
Buy Stage Beauty on Amazon
Buy Stage Beauty on Ebay
^^ Back to Movies, Short Films, and Other Works of Cinema
Download the full 15-minute episode here!
Stage Beauty on Wikipedia
Stage Beauty on IMDb
Stage Beauty on Rotten Tomatoes
Stage Beauty on Metacritic
Buy Stage Beauty on Amazon
Buy Stage Beauty on Ebay
^^ Back to Movies, Short Films, and Other Works of Cinema