ME AND ORSON WELLES (UK/USA, 2009) (12A)Wednesday, 24th March 2010Directed by Richard Linklater. Screenplay: Holly Gent Palmo and Vince Palmo from the novel by Robert Kaplow. Photography (Colour): Dick Pope. Music: Michael J. McEvoy. Length: 114 mins.
With: CHRISTIAN McKAY (Orson Welles), CLAIRE DANES (Sonja Jones), ZAC EFRON (Richard Samuels), ZOE KAZAN (Gretta Adler), BEN CHAPLIN (George Coulouris), EDDIE MARSAN (John Houseman),
KELLY REILLY (Muriel Brassler), JAMES TUPPER (Joseph Cotten), LEO BILL (Norman Lloyd).
First up in the mini-season is Me and Orson Welles and in this instance Philip French not only selected it as one of the ten best films of 2009 but went on to say that no performance by an actor had pleased him more during the year than that by Christian McKay. One understands his enthusiasm since McKay not only captures the flamboyant style of Welles the man but persuasively captures his acting persona too. Both are relevant because Richard Linklater’s film although based on a novel deals with real-life events in 1937 when Welles, still in his early twenties, staged Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in New York with his own company, the Mercury Theatre. It was an innovative modern-style production in which Welles appeared as Brutus. History records that a young unknown actor appeared in the supporting role of Lucius and what Robert Kaplow did in his novel was to base it on historical research but to give this anonymous youth a name and a story. In this way we are invited to encounter Welles’s world through the eyes of this character, Richard Samuels as played by Zac Ephron.
Other noted names in the Orson Welles story are portrayed in this film: the actors Joseph Cotten, George Coulouris and Norman Lloyd are played by James Tupper, Ben Chaplin and Leo Bill respectively while the producer John Houseman is Eddie Marsan. The fictional element introduces two female characters in the persons of the seductive production assistant Sonja Jones (Claire Danes) and the aspiring young writer Gretta Adler (Zoe Kazan). But for those interested in Welles and his career it’s the film’s factually based portrait of Welles that is at the centre of the film. However, it needs to be stressed that Me and Orson Welles offers more than that. It may well be the best ever film to capture the sense of a shared theatrical endeavour for, as the rehearsals struggle on often disastrously, it conveys splendidly the uncertainty that exists as opening night approaches and no one can be sure whether the outcome will be triumph or catastrophe.
(Programme note by Mansel Stimpson)
