The Kid Stays in the Picture - Royal Court

A documentary about Robert Evans, the film producer, in the form of a play, you've got a like documentaries to like this (and it also helps if you are fanatical about seventies movies, like The Godfather, Marathon Man and Chinatown). Saw the matinee yesterday, and loved it.

Some spoilers follow. . .

I had seen the original movie documentary about a decade ago, and this feels similar to that, with added details. What you do lose here is Robert Evans own voice, as he narrated the documentary himself, sounding a lot like a world-weary Raymond Chandler detective, equal parts braggy and self-deprecating.

What you gain here is a construction of movie-making taking place in front of your face, as well as a deconstruction of a personality, having him played by many fragmented voices and three faces.

Of these, the most important face is Christian Camargo (who played Dexter's psycho brother on tv). It is hard to believe that Camargo came late to this project, as when he puts on those square glasses, his look, his mannerisms, his voice, everything about him uncannily resembles seventies-era Robert Evans. This is something the movie documentary did not have, a living breathing facsimile of Evans in his prime. Camargo is gold!

There is something wonderfully androgynous, as well as modest about Robert Evans, which for me is part of the fascination of the man, that he does not come across as the priapic monster-famed-for-swimming-in-women-and-cocaine that the tabloids (and indeed, some of his friends) made him out to be. Instead of trying to take all the credit for films like Chinatown, he freely admits he couldn't make head or tail of Robert Towne's screenplay, that he never could understand that "Chinatown" was a metaphor rather than a place. And he tells us what it's like to be cuckolded by Ali McGraw.

If Camargo's physical portrayal of Evans is definitive, Evan's definitive voice is that of Danny Huston, who plays the part that Evan's own voiceover played in the movie. This is a story about surviving, in some form or another, and Danny Huston's voiceover, accompanied by his shadow on the back screen, convincingly conveys the grizzled voice of a hapless survivor, and is the framing device for Evan's whole life story.

Heather Burns, who plays the significant women in Evan's life (though only one of his wives, Ali McGraw - the other 6 wives are never even mentioned in either this show or the movie documentary) is examplary, a chameleon who morphs from playing a wispy Mia Farrow to a full-on seductive Ali McGraw, and more! She even nails her portrayal of the young Robert Evans, the show's obvious tribute to Evan's androgynous physicality.

What the play uniquely achieves is having all aspects of Evans, and his life, as a clothes seller, an actor, a film studio boss, a producer, a stroke victim, exist at once, in different faces and voices, where the present, the past, and screen reflections of both present and past, combine to show how Evans, and by extension, ourselves, are all always fragments as well as forming some kind of whole.

Fascinating and absorbing, with the caveat that you have to give a damn about Evans for any of this to work.

4 stars

This is horrifically awful

With total f*** ups in the video projection this evening

Again

Just people telling an abbreviated story

A series of events

Emotionally frigid

When I saw this towards the end of last week, there were no technical problems which I noticed.

As for being "just a series of events", that's quite a common feature of autobiographies!

Personally, I found the story and its presentation quite exhilarating. In the theatre, I was focused mainly on the rapid-fire storytelling, but the form of the show became more significant when I reflected on it over the following days.

I think you'll probably enjoy this more if you love cinema in general, and especially if you saw the movies in the cinema as they were released. But that's not necessary, just an extra dimension of enhanced interest.

This show is an amazingly complex achievement but the main thing is the story it tells of Robert Evans, the kid who stays in the picture.

Do I need to know anything about this before seeing it or can I go in totally cold?

2* - Wos

2* - The Stage

4* - Da Times

And don't forget all those stars on the floor of the Bar and Kitchen.

Really enjoyed this at today's matinee, I would agree pretty much with steve earlier.

One thing to clarify though, it is very obvious that the teleprompters are a feature and not a bug, the audience are meant to aee them (and the actors don't refer to them, except maybe the older Evans). It's a distancing device, to remind us we are watching a reconstruction, a version, a rehearsed story of a life.

A debate sparked by this production?
BBC: Should autocues be used in theatres?
www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-39552653