Before the Great Fire and the Great Plague of the mid-seventeenth century, London slowly, joyously awoke to the end of the Interregnum, that dark period of the evil regicide, Cromwell and his dull and dim son and successor. Theaters shut down during the Protectorate now reopened and the die-hard, dour Puritans either doffed their somber garb and decamped for more favorable vice-free venues or joined the fun.

Director Richard Eyre and script author Jeffrey Hatcher (who wrote the play on which "Stage Beauty" is derived) set the screen with a feast of authentic costumes and an almost palpable ambiance of a great city resurrecting a rich cultural life, at least for those of means.

But, as has been said, the play is the thing and the acting here is uniformly engrossing, indeed superb.

Based more or less on history, the film chronicles an awkward and for many painful evolution of law and theater, the two intertwined. For when Charles II was restored to the throne lost by his father (who also lost something else of even more estimable value),theaters reopened but under an old law that forbade the presence of actresses on the stage. The great female roles of Shakespeare were performed by men, some of whom were the subjects of audience and patron adulation for their skills of gender mimicry.

Ned Keynaston (Billy Crudop) is the leader of the pack, a star of the stage whose Desdemona is the height of his career. Serving as his dresser is Maria (Clair Danes),a frustrated actress who mouths the lines of Desdemona from the side of the stage as Ned wows the punters.

Maria actually gets to act behind Ned's back but in a less than first-line theater, her costume borrowed, to be generous, from the unsuspecting Ned.

What follows is a comedy and a drama as the king (Rupert Everett),at the urging of one of his mistresses, Nell Gynn (newcomer Zoe Tapper) proclaims that women may take on the roles of their sex and the cadre of female impersonators must seek new and gender authentic roles. At first amused, then devastated by a loss of roles, income and prestige, Ned slides to singing bawdy songs in drag to a somewhat low(er) class clientele in a sink run by a foulmouthed harridan. But under the protection of a genuinely odious, rotund and foul Sir Charles (Richard Griffith),Maria becomes the toast of the town for her fine acting.

Sexual attraction equally matched by a moving ambiguity permeates both the roles played by Maria and Ned and their off-stage lives. Maria is in love with Ned who is, at least, potentially bisexual while actually intimate with one of the king's favorites, the second Duke of Buckingham (Ben Chaplin). Buckingham was, in actuality, one of the most complex characters during Charles's two decade exile and then restoration to the throne. A conniver and master manipulator, here his skills are shown as being wholly adapted to surviving in a court attended by intrigue at every turn.

Eyre projects role reversal both with Ned and Maria's theater life and their increasing personal but never simple involvement. Can he make love to a woman? Does he know himself what his orientation is? There is a certain contemporaneity to the artfully acted issues raised in this mid-1600s scenario.

Eyre could not have selected a better cast. Crudop is penetrating as a man whose whole, strange persona is transformed in an instant by a monarch's command. Everett is disarmingly foppish as the Stuart monarch but in a critical scene he reveals his deep, lasting resentment over his father's and his dynasty's fate as he orders women to be allowed to perform. Edward Fox is splendid in short takes as Charles's key minister, Sir Edward Hyde (the Earl of Clarendon but he's never identified with his proper peerage title).

Zoe Tapper may well have studied the life of her character, "the Protestant Whore" (so known and loved by the London underclass to distinguish her from the despised "Catholic Whore" who alternated with Nell for the king's company and body (forget about the queen-she doesn't even make an appearance here). She's crude, raw, vulgar, sentimental, loyal and cunning - she IS Nell Gynn.

Hugh Bonneville is the randy, compulsive diarist Sir Samuel Pepys, father of the Royal Navy, here a stage door Johnny, a voyeur. Ben Chaplin as the Duke of Buckingham is just the right admixture of randiness and a healthy regard for the penalty that can be incurred by going too far over the edge of conventionality. And Tom Wilkinson as Ned's and then Maria's stage impresario combines business acumen with a soft human touch.

But special kudos go to Clair Danes - this is her best performance to date. She runs the gamut of emotions from helpless subservience to repressive laws to sprightly awakening of her worth to deep confusion about her priorities and needs. She inhabits the role of Maria with skill and grace. An Oscar-worthy display.

The score is fine, briskly and authentically complementing the story. And for the first time ever in a movie a king of England is shown cavorting in the royal rack with his mistress while six adorable King Charles Spaniels look on.

10/10

I have to tell you I was completely blown away by Jeffrey Hatcher's film adaption of his own play Stage Beauty. It's a wonderful recreation of Restoration Stuart Great Britain and it deals with an innovation for the English speaking world.

Picture Charles Stuart coming back to the United Kingdom to claim his rightful throne. Historians by the way have been fascinated with how he was able to do it so easily with minimal bloodshed. Even more fascinated how Oliver Cromwell's Lord Protectorate just collapsed within two years of his death.

Up until the reign of Charles I, women were not on stage all parts were played by men in drag. After the Puritans took over the country, the theater itself was banned. Among other things that Charles II did when he came to the throne was restore the theater.

Stage Beauty is Jeffrey Hatcher's account of how Charles II opened the profession for women as well. Rupert Everett is a marvelous Charles II who among other things did enjoy the theater.

Mr. Hatcher was very good in showing for today's audience the relationship of Charles II with the Duke of Clarendon played here by James Fox. The banquet scene is brilliantly done. Clarendon was a faithful and loyal supporter of the Stuart house and went into exile because of his loyalty. Charles did feel he owed him and he was the first chief minister that he had. But Clarendon was an old fashioned guy and was quite ready to clap Claire Danes in jail for presuming to enter a forbidden profession. But Charles overruled Clarendon as he did many times and opened the theater to women. As you can gather, he and Clarendon came to a parting of the ways, but that's a subject for another film.

Stage Beauty concerns not only Charles II's decision but it's impact on two people. Claire Danes is the stage dresser to Billy Crudup, a gay man who specialized in female roles, his favorite being Desdemona in Othello. Claire does open the profession for women, but it costs Billy Crudup his job and he's reduced to playing in bawdier unlicensed sort of entertainment, the kind Claire had been doing previously.

Danes and Crudup played against each other beautifully on the screen and in real life since they teamed up in real life after this film was finished. Also look for a nice performance by Tom Wilkinson as the actor who plays Othello to Crudup's Desdemona.

Opening the stage to women was as groundbreaking an event in its time as Rosie the Riveteer in the 20th century. Stage Beauty beautifully captures the moment.

A story of Shakespearean actors that takes place during the Restoration, after the Bard's death, when men who played women's roles on stage were being replaced by genuine women. The young actor being displaced in this instance is Billy Crudup, whose specialty is Desdemona, she being the wife that Othello strangles out of mistaken jealousy. The female dresser who more or less forces her way onto the stage, with the blessings of King Charles, is Claire Danes.

Crudup is upset. He's spent his life struggling to master operatic feminine gestures and imitating female voices. He's gotten so confused about his own gender that he plays the female when in bed with another man. (Gasp.) Danes' character is no actress and at first merely mimics Crudup's theatrical gestures when she plays the role of Desdemona. But guess what.

She teaches him how to be a man, and he teaches her how to act naturally, or at least naturalistically. When hey finally do "Othello" together, he doesn't lower her sweetly to the bed with his hands gently on her neck. He bangs her around and she shrieks as their antics destroy some furniture. Marlon and Montgomery were no more shocking to post-war audiences sixty years ago. Together Crudup and Danes transform the art of acting.

I'd expected a kind of replay of "Shakespeare in Love" but this is better because it doesn't meander so much. It hangs together. It has more élan, more vulgarity (some of it pointless). There is a straightforward narrative with a beginning, a convincing conflict-ridden transition, and a satisfying end. Also it has a tantalizing glimpse of Claire Danes' left breast, in case of any doubt about her genotype.

That may mean nothing to most viewers but in the interest of full disclosure I have to admit that I'm deeply in love with Claire Danes. She's not Hollywood gorgeous or sexy. Her features are a bit bulky and her blue eyes are always open, as if she'd just been pinched. But she's my kind of woman -- and rich too. Not that her portfolio is of any consequence as long as it's well endowed. I can't understand why my many proposals of marriage have gone unanswered. Probably intercepted by low-life flunkies. It's a shame too, because I'm supernally handsome myself, for a man over eighty. My five marriages simply go to prove how attractive I am. And though I'm not exactly lettered, I'm very gay and witty, especially when drunk.

Anyway, it's an interesting flick and informative as well. Tim Hatley, the coutumier, deserves a medal. You have never seen such outrageous get ups. Richard Griffiths, as Sir Charles Sedley, is a wonder -- a rotund figure buried under a mound of gilt, all shaped like a football, except for two skinny calves propping him up like stilts and a wild and voluminous mop of a long wig of curly hair from which his plump, painted face peeps. That reminds me: Samuel Pepys shows up briefly. Pepys was a man of sublime good taste. He and I both frequented the same pub, The Prospect of Whitby, though not at the same time. The photography is lush and soft. The screen turns into a colorful pageant.

Some nice, bitchy exchanges too. Nicely done.