Double Feature by John Logan. Hampstead Theatre, Eton Avenue, Swiss Cottage, London NW3 to 16 March 2024. 4✩✩✩✩ Review: William Russell.

Double Feature by John Logan. Hampstead Theatre, Eton Avenue, Swiss Cottage, London NW3 to 16 March 2024.

4✩✩✩✩ Review: William Russell.

“A fascinating look at the way actors and directors clash and exploit their power.”

The relationship between film director and actor is examined in this fascinating look at how Tippi Hedren fared when making Marnie for Alfrd Hiitchcock and the young director Michael Reeves making Witchfinder General fared when he came up against the master of the horror movie Vincent Price. Both Hedren and Reeves learned lessons although possibly the only survivor was Hedren. Hitchcock, whose obsession with her is well documented, did destroy her chances of a career as a major Hollywood star – she was under personal contract to him and he refused to let her work for anyone – although she did carry on working mainly on television. Now 94 she the mother and grandmother of Melanie Griffith and Dakota Johnson respectively. Logan has set the two encounters in the same studio cottage and the action of the two encounters takes place in a series of short scenes switching from one to the other seamlessly. It is Hollywood’s idea of an English country cottage one of which Hitchcock actually had in the studio as his place of refuge where he shot the film. We see him discussing the infamous rape scene in Marnie with Hedren – he has asked her round after the end of the day’s shooting - and how it gradually turns deeply disturbing as he clearly is demanding she sleep with him. Meanwhile Reeves, who wants to make a realistic historical drama about the Witchfinder General discovers that his star has turned up in a rage, is going to quit as he is fed up accepting directionfrom him and had come to make yet one more film in the long series of Edgar Alan Poe films in spite of the fact that Witchfinder story had nothing to do with Poe. In fact Price is so pissed off not only is he quitting but he is intent on giving the young man a lesson in the realities of what studios do to films when they do not get what they want from a director. Reeves ends up offering himself to Price who actually turns him down but agrees to stay.

The performances are all outstanding although Ian MacNiece’s Hitchcock is possibly more repulsive than the fat man really was and Jonathan Hyde, while every inch the louche Hollywood veteran, never quite delivers the Price sound. Price’s voice was one of his trademarks. In a way it is so familiar that to believe he is Price you really need to hear him sound like Price – but just as Johnny Flynn in The Motive and the Cue, who never sounds remotely like Richard Burton, creates his own Burton Hyde creates his own Price. It works well enough but something is lacking and the same goes for McNiece’s Hitchcock whose voice is also familiar to the world. Rowan Polonski has no such problem with playing Michael Reeves because there is no image of him in the audience mind so what we get is young man with ideas about what he wants to do without the experience to realise that he is in no position to carry them out and we have no idea what he sounded like. Joanna Vanderham is the image of the woman who appeared in Marnie and The Birds and establishes beautifully that she is no dumb model turned actress but someone as astute and clever as they come. The play raises all sorts of questions about how far a director should go to get what he wants from his players and what they should do, must do perhaps, to keep their role and further their career. The McGuffin, which is probably what it is in the Hitchcock tradition, of performing the two stories simultaneously works seamlessly as you get left wondering where one story is going only to be left feeling just as much on tenterhooks by the next one. Given that Witchfinder General got made and in spite of being renamed in America as part of the Poe collection was moderately successful and went on to be a cult movie it leaves the unanswered question as to what would have become of Reeves last seen in his underpants offering himself to Price. He died a year after making the film from an accidental overdose of sleeping tablets. As for Hitchcock, he made more films although not very good ones – the final one Family Plot is dreadful - while Hedren turned out to be a survivor although not unscathed. Double Feature is a battle of the sexes and egos and as good as it gets.

Cast

Jonathan Hyde – Vincent Price.

Ian McNiece – Alfred Hitchcock.

Rowan Polonski – Michael Reeves.

Joanna Vanderham – Tipp Hedren.

Creatives

Director – Jonathan Kent.

Designer – Anthony Ward.

Lighting Designer – Hugh Vanstone.

Sound Designer – Paul Groothuis.