helenistic, Author at Helen McCrory

Anna Karenina Review: The Love Train

On May 7, 2000April 13, 2021 By helenistic No Comments

What on earth would Tolstoy have thought? Channel 4 have upped the raunch factor in Anna Karenina, his heavyweight morality tale. But it’s a good move, reckons Mark Lawson

Mark Lawson | May 7, 2000 | The Guardian

Tolstoy can’t have known, when writing a novel back in the 1870s, that trains rushing into tunnels would become a cinematic euphemism for sex. But his book about a Moscow political wife’s passion for a soldier – in which the speed of trains is a metaphor for the dangers and consequences of sexual passion – has consistently attracted film-makers. David Selznick cast Garbo in 1935, while Alexander Korda chose Vivien Leigh for the role in 1947. More recently, the writer-director Bernard Rose made a movie version with Sophie Marceau. Now Helen McCrory stars in a new four-part TV adaptation of Anna Karenina (Tuesday, 9pm, Channel 4).

Penelope Fitzgerald – a fine novelist who died last week – once expressed the hope that television would soon run out of great novels to adapt, and return literature to readers. But, although there are the inevitable losses – authorial tone and psychological complexity – Anna Karenina is, at the basic but crucial level of plot, the perfect book for TV.

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The Triumph of Love at the Almeida – Review

On September 6, 1999May 12, 2021 By helenistic No Comments

Helen McCrory is a Very Special Talent

Matt Wolf | September 6, 1999 | Variety

It takes a very special actress to burst the fey, densely plotted artifice that comes with the plays of Marivaux, but Helen McCrory is a very special talent indeed. Her amazing performance last year in “How I Learned to Drive” — a portrait of awakened sexuality both confident and fearful — transformed Paula Vogel’s play, and McCrory is scarcely less commanding amid the thicket of amorous intrigue that defines “The Triumph of Love.” Her surroundings on this occasion, however, aren’t nearly as happy as they were at the Donmar Warehouse last year, and even the staunchest of admirers may have trouble sitting through the (intermissionless) evening.

The problem is a production that is pitched somewhere between the Keystone Kops and “As You Like It” — McCrory and sidekick Tonia Chauvet would make a terrific Rosalind and Celia — of a play that is beloved by academics but is arid and even dull in performance, defying a decidedly eccentric supporting cast to bring it to tingling life.

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Print Media Reviews Triumph of Love

The Triumph of Love at the Almeida – Review

On September 5, 1999May 14, 2021 By helenistic No Comments

Hiding behind the mask of love

by Paul Taylor | September 5, 1999 | The Independent

HEROINES who go round disguised as men are as common in classical comedy as men who go around disguised as Barbra Streisand are in certain clubs. But few of the former breed are as single-minded as Princess Leonide, the central figure in Marivaux’s 1732 play The Triumph of Love, revived in a witty and beautifully judged production by James Macdonald.

The high curved hedges and sandy floor of Jeremy Herbert’s set evokes the rural retreat of the philosopher Hermovrate and his frumpy sister, Leontine, the kind of self-deceivedly high-minded couple to whom the mere mention of the word “love” is anathema. Since he was smuggled there as a child, this sequestered residence has been the secret home of Agis, the rightful heir to the throne usurped by Leonide’s family. Having fallen in love with him from afar, the Princess infiltrates the set-up in male disguise. Her aim is to win his hand and restore the kingdom to him. But as the daughter of his enemies, she can scarcely expect an immediate welcome and so feels the need to approach his heart via various incognitos.

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Print Media Reviews Triumph of Love

The Triumph of Love at the Almedia – Review

On September 3, 1999May 24, 2021 By helenistic No Comments

Comic age of reason

by Michael Billington | September 3, 1999 | The Guardian

This is the third Marivaux play to hit London this year. Exactly like The Dispute and The Game Of Love And Chance, it takes a scientific look at sentiment. But what makes Marivaux such a brilliantly ambiguous writer, as James Macdonald’s revival shrewdly realises, is that he attacks the notion that you can treat people as guinea-pigs while analysing the human heart with merciless precision.

Written in 1732, the play is set in mythical Greece though the ambience is deeply French.The situation is also simple, even if the background is complex; both Martin Crimp’s otherwise impeccable translation and the production could do more to clarify the crucial exposition.

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How I Learned to Drive Reviews

How I Learned to Drive at the Donmar Warehouse – Review

On July 13, 1998May 14, 2021 By helenistic No Comments

The dark-haired, throaty-voiced Helen McCrory is giving the female performance of the year so far in Paula Vogel’s “How I Learned to Drive”

Those interested in tracing that thrilling moment when a promising young performer becomes a star should make tracks to the Donmar Warehouse, where the dark-haired, throaty-voiced Helen McCrory is giving the female performance of the year so far in Paula Vogel’s “How I Learned to Drive.” American visitors, of course, may feel they already know every backroad of Vogel’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, especially now that it looks to be produced throughout the United States. But there’s no way to prepare for the impact of McCrory’s fierce take on a character who is a survivor, yes, but at an enormous psychological price. Abetted by a production from the Donmar’s new associate director, John Crowley, that is every bit her equal, McCrory grabs the wheel of this sorrowful, shimmering play, and — as Li’l Bit herself might say — floors it.

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