ROSEBUD. To 21 January.

London

ROSEBUD
by Mark Jenkins

King’s Head Theatre To 21 January 2006
Tue-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat & 12, 19 Jan 3.30pm
Runs 1hr 25min No interval

TICKETS: 020 7226 1916
www.kingshead.org
Review: Timothy Ramsden 30 December

Blazing personality colourfully caught.
Orson Welles took on 2 establishments and they didn’t like it. One was the Hollywood studio system, which he beat at their own game of film-making. The other was America itself; the one regret he expresses in Mark Jenkins’ solo script is declining the chance to stand as senator for Wisconsin. They elected Joseph McCarthy.

As a film director Welles had both the ingenuity and persistence that comprise genius. He was driven from early on by love of Shakespeare, and certainty his plays were for everyone. So an early, government-funded project was a Black Macbeth in Harlem. It had them queuing. Only one critic complained. As the production incorporated voodoo the actors tried a bit out on the critic. He died within a couple of days. Let me assure you, I liked this show a lot.

Christian McKay catches the set, smiling block of a face seen in Welles’ Third Man Harry Lime. Later he dons fattening-up gear and becomes increasingly hirsute as the old man whose last fine outing on film was as his much-admired Falstaff in Chimes at Midnight, but who became addicted to food, gluttonous for calories as his film projects were ravenous for cash.

As a young tearaway, he frightened half America with his reality-style radio War of the Worlds (presumably it never crossed his mind anyone would tune in late to an Orson Welles broadcast), and dazzled the land with the Rosebud film Citizen Kane, which earned him the enmity of supposed Kane original, news magnate William Randolph Hearst. His follow-up film, The Magnificent Ambersons started the downward spiral. Trashed following studio personnel changes while Welles was away as cultural ambassador in South America, it was left a brief shadow of its potential.

As he became himself, advertising frozen peas and sherry on TV to raise funds for real films. This extraordinary personality and its mangling by machine-man mediocrity is analysed and fascinatingly told in McKay’s magnetic performance, catching the bold young and disillusioned older Welles, as it is in Jenkins’ well-paced search for Welles’ own Rosebud, the thing giving value and significance to life.

Orson Welles: Christian McKay

Director: Josh Richards

2006-01-11 16:41:04