Photo EamonnMcGoldrickDavid O. Selznick is a movie mogul with a problem. He is three weeks into shooting Gone with the Wind and he hates it. He shuts down production and fires his director. The bills are mounting, his reputation is on the line, Vivien Leigh is trying to leave the country, and now his co-producer and father-in-law Louis B. Mayer is on the phone... Read more …
Desperate, he pulls director Victor Fleming off the set of The Wizard of Oz and calls in Ben Hecht, script doctor extraordinaire - the only man in Hollywood who can write a new screenplay in five days... also probably the only man left in Hollywood who has never read the epic novel they are trying to film! Locking everyone into his office with only peanuts and bananas for sustenance, a madcap marathon of creativity begins.
Based on the alarming true story of the making of the first ever blockbuster, this genuinely hilarious comedy captures the chaotic birth of a true movie classic from the golden age of cinema.
For lovers of Gone with the Wind, this affectionate look behind the creative scenes is unmissable fun. If you have never seen the film, this terrific caper offers a riotously funny introduction to the biggest Hollywood blockbuster of all time.
The interplay between Joseph Chance as Hecht, Benny Young as Fleming and Steven McNicoll as Selznick ricochets around the stage, with the only pause for breath coming from Helen Logan as the unflappable Miss Poppenguhl in this delicious dissection of Hollywood Babylon in excelsis.
If some of the play’s many shrill shouting-matches seem less meaningful than these, it’s still easy to sympathise with the intensity of pressure that surrounded these remarkable men, at that moment in history; and to admire the clarity and energy of a production that signals another major success for Rachel O’Riordan, in her fine first season at Perth.
Perth Theatre, Perth from Wednesday March 14, 2012, until Saturday March 31, 2012. More info: www.horsecross.co.uk
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