Well I've only run stage reviews a couple of times, and it's been when the reviews interested me. Before it was fan reaction to Tarantino's Broadway work that was in the exact opposite direction from where the 'legit critics' were coming from. So in this case, that would mean it would be a bomb of Nicole Kidman's play, but... that ain't the case. I've been hearing great things everywhere and from everyone about this performance. This would seem to signal that she is in fine acting form. Perhaps she'll be THIS good or better in Kubrick's film. So here ya go... enjoy, the tickets are so high, this is as close as any of us geeks will most likely get dag dang it.
OK! I know you are film site. I know that theatre has nothing to do with the great stuff you create here. But, I think this review deserves a look in, because it is proof that Nicole Kidman is one of the best actresses in the world today.
You probably have already heard about Nicole's stage debut - in London at the Donmar Warehouse, a tiny 200 seater theatre. She's acting in a play called the Blue Room which is based on La Ronde and is about ten sexual encounters between five men and five women. All the men are played by Iain Glen, all the women by Nicole Kidman.
Anyway, the reviews have been amazing, describing it as a form of theatrical viagra. The going rate for a ticket on the black market is around £1000 (I guess that's about $1800). And people are literally willing to kill to get a ticket. Well, yours truely was fortunate enough to get his hands on one, and I thought it was my duty to share this religous experience with your readers.
What can I say? I have never been bowled over so much by someone's sexuality or their acting talents in my life before. Putting it simply, Nicole Kidman is absolutely fucking amazing! She plays five characters seamlessly - a cockney hooker, like somthing out of a Mike Leigh film; a european nyphet, like Butch's girlfriend in Pulp Fiction; a politicians wife, sort of Kate Winslett meets Natasha McElhone; a seventeen year old model - sort of like Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver; and an aging glamerous actress - Elizabeth Taylor meets Emma Thompson. And the point is, she pulls off each of these characters fantastically in the space of an hour forty five. Each one had their own voice (four very believable english accents), their own mannerisms, ways of walking, of smiling, everything. In short, Nicole clearly knows how to act. And in fact she can do it better than anyone I've seen on stage this year (which includes Ian McKellen, Kevin Spacey, Alan Rickman and Helen Mirren). And besides her fantastic performances, she exudes a natural sexuality that captivated everyone in the audience. I heard one gay man say on their way out, 'almost enough to make me straight'. She's got that magically beauty that very few have - one minute she's a fourteen year old girl, the next - a wise middle aged woman. Somehow she is both strong and weak, naive and worldly, dominant and submissive. OK, I'll stop salivating now - but the point is I felt as if I was watching Marilyn Monroe.
So, what's the point of me telling you all this, other than to make a few readers pretty green? Well, after seeing this, my excitement for Eyes Wide Shut is absolutely huge. If Kubrick can capture just half of what I saw on stage yesterday in that film, it will be a bloody masterpiece.
Anyway, hope this is all of some use, please call me Holly Martins.
