Being Julia Birthday

markosf took me to lunch and "Being Julia" as part of my Birthday Week! Woo hoo!

Annette Bening turns in an OVER-The-TOP performance in "Being Julia"! The script itself was a bit dull for me. (It's based on a W. Somerset Maugham novel, of whom I am not such a big fan.) I actually took a bit of a snooze in the first 10 minutes or so. On one hand, watching Bening take her character to such theatrical extremes is sort of fun to watch! She makes Faye Dunaway seem minimalist! However, the character is so huge to begin with (the point being that she does not have a reality outside of the stage), Bening doesn't really have any choice but to BLAST away at it! She won the Golden Globe in the Comedy category, which makes perfect sense, as I can see this becoming something of a cult classic down the road. With a few cocktails and a room full of queens, the final 20 minutes could be a HOOT!! Jeremy Irons, Juliet Stevenson, Michael Gambon and the rest of the cast can do nothing but stand back and watch Bening CHEW away enormous amounts of scenery - which is the point of the piece, but still... Just a little bit of give and take would make her more human and watchable.

As an endnote: Mark decided to imitate her all the way out of the theater...