Thunder Rain Marketing Internet Publishing
For the GWTWMemories.com Website
Daily Update
Posted by Faye Bell on September 08, 2001 at 20:56:49:
For those of you are Vivien Liegh fans and live in the London, England area, here is a treat for you --
Playing now, through September 22nd at:
The Jermyn Street Theater
16b Jermyn Street,
London, SW1 - England
Tuesday to Saturday 7.30pm, Saturday and Sunday Matinees 4pm
£16 per person ($24 approx) /£12 concessions ($18 approx)
Tel: 020 7287 2875
Nearest Tube: Piccadilly Circus
The performance highlights Marcy Lafferty's wonderful one-woman play is a biography of Vivien Leigh, largely using her own words, presented in the form of a dream-like press conference at which she recalls and relives the most significant moments of
her life.
Lafferty herself plays Leigh and does an excellent job at suggesting her energy, her passion and her vulnerability - and Dennise Esposito's make-up gives her an uncanny resemblance to the screen legend.
The play charts Leigh's story from her birth in India in 1913, through her first marriage to barrister Leigh Holman, her early stage successes, her life with Larry Olivier, her famous screen roles and her increasingly severe manic depression and ill health. (The play is set in 1960, seven years before her
death).
There are some hugely entertaining, anecdotal sequences along the way concerning the filming of GONE WITH THE WIND, and A STREET CAR NAMED DESIRE, and the characters of Brando, David O. Selznick and George Cukor are conjured up in a few deft strokes.
Theatrically there are no twists; once the chronological "press conference with flashback format" is established it isn't changed. But the material is so engrossing and the performance is so compelling, it all works beautifully.
(This review was written by Warwick Thompson for the Metro Newspaper on Wednesday September 5th 2001.)
NOTE: A couple of Gone With The Wind fans and friends of mine are going to see this play on 15th September, and will report back with a copy of the program and their "own review" of the play....