Jeffrey Hatcher's adaptation of his own play, directed by Richard Eyre, erects a protofeminist milestone, early Restoration period, to mark the end of one era and the dawn of another: Charles the Second's edict which lifted the ban on women on the English stage, and a second-thought edict (sped along by a royal blow job) which imposed a new ban on men playing women. Billy Crudup hardly seems pretty enough to be thrown Pepys's bouquet as "the loveliest woman on the stage" (was Jonathan Rhys-Meyers booked up?), and Claire Danes seems too whiny and wilty to be a feminist spearhead. They each, however, have a good audition scene, Crudup having the tougher of them, trying in vain to suppress his ingrained femininities. The film trifles with notions of gender, beauty, art, and artifice ("A woman playing a woman -- what's the trick in that?") in an engaging way, when it isn't flogged to tatters by an overinsistent musical score. With Tom Wilkinson, Rupert Everett, Ben Chaplin, Richard Griffiths. (2004) — Duncan Shepherd
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