The Play’s The Thing!

I don’t always like it when films are about making other films. There’s something about seeing a film crew on camera that can destroy the magic. Nothing is real, they seem to say. See? SEE?

There are many exceptions to this rule: Singin’ In The Rain; Bowfinger; Mulholland Drive; Inland Empire; 8½; Be Kind Rewind; Peeping Tom; Ed Wood… But if it isn’t done right, then I’d much rather watch the fake film they’re making than the film about the film they’re making.

But onscreen plays are different!

A lot of the time, when some kind of theatrical performance takes place during a film, it’s much more elaborate than any real-life theatrical performance could ever hope to be. Onscreen, they don’t have to worry about lighting cues, scene changes, blocking, or other practicalities. So sometimes, what you get is something so fantastical that you wonder if anyone involved in the production has ever set foot in a theatre before.

So, let’s take a look at some of the best theatrical performances from films. These are productions that, for one reason or another, they couldn’t possibly pull off in real life. Unless they were magic. Or very, very rich.

The Addams Family (1991)

Wednesday and Pugsley Addams are performing an abridged scene from Hamlet for some kind of school talent show. It’s a sword fight, and the kids have added a few special effects. And for some reason, they’re dressed as pirates. Why not?

Pugsley slashes Wednesday’s wrist – a very palpable hit! – resulting in a shower of blood. She retaliates by chopping her brother’s arm off, but he then slashes her throat, causing an even stronger torrent of blood. Wednesday turns to the audience to deliver her moving death monologue, and there’s not a dry face in the house. The rest of the Addams family, though, were sat strategically in the middle of the auditorium. They presumably knew what was coming, so they’re clean and dry when they give their standing ovation.

Now, it is of course unlikely that a pair of schoolchildren could pull off such a bloodbath onstage, even if they’re as gifted as Wednesday and Pugsley. But it’s perhaps even more unlikely that their school would even let them try in the first place. They are, after all, creepy, kooky, and altogether ooky kids.

But we see Uncle Fester intervene in their rehearsals, and we see him dropping off some mysterious packages as they get ready backstage, one of which is shaped suspiciously like a severed limb. So, presumably, the kids had promised their school a bit of good, old-fashioned, clean Shakespeare, with emphasis on the clean. How was the school to know that their deranged uncle had ready access to body parts and buckets of blood?

Frustratingly, if you watch The Addams Family on ITV or Channel 5 these days, they tend to cut most of the bloodletting. So for this talent show scene, you just see Wednesday and Pugsley take to the stage, only for it to cut immediately to the family’s applause. So, they just look like extremely supportive parents. Which they are! But still.

The Elephant Man (1980)

The real life Joseph Merrick was a regular theatregoer, and would apparently act out his favourite pantomime scenes in his bedroom. But John Hurt’s John Merrick only gets to go to the theatre once, on the last night of his life. And what he sees is unlike anything he’s ever seen before.

A cat leaps onto the stage and takes a grandiose bow. Fairies smile, pirouette, and fly. Paper birds flutter, regal swans glide, and hobby horses gallop through space. There are explosions, there’s glittering snowfall, and a prisoner reaches through the bars of his cell. And all this takes place on an immensely elaborate stage that involves a flowing river, a distant castle, and mysterious flower children waiting in the wings.

Maybe this is just what it would feel like to see something so wholesome when almost all you’ve known so far is pain and humiliation. The reaction shots of John, clearly overwhelmed, are particularly moving. John really seems to relate to that unhappy prisoner!

But I also must point out Anthony Hopkins’s face. He’s sat completely still, staring gravely at the stage, very much a study in human dignity. You just know he’s thinking, “I hope he likes this.”

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988)

We only see brief glimpses of this touring stage production about the many brave exploits of Baron Munchausen: A mechanical Sun rises over a giant cheese wheel. Before our very eyes, this cheese wheel transforms into a large ship sailing across some undulating ocean waves, which is swallowed by a whale of prodigious size and length. Singing mermaids intervene, and the Baron uses his snuff to force the whale to sneeze him out.

It all looks as magnificent, as is to be expected from an unbridled Terry Gilliam. But the onscreen audience is having none of it! Their only reaction is to laugh derisively. They have their reasons – this is the Age of Reason, don’t you know! And the Baron’s exploits are decidedly unreasonable.

But then the Baron himself enters the theatre, and basically shuts down the whole operation by loudly declaring the whole thing to be utter hogwash. He’s never seen so much rubbish in his life. The truth, you see, the Baron’s real life adventures, were much more impressive. More impressive than you’d ever believe.

The play we see onscreen was wasted on this sneering audience. But then, the film itself was wasted on real-life sneering audiences too. This was a disastrous flop, and of course, any film that underperforms at the box office must surely be a bad film, yes? Especially if said film cost a lot to make.

Nuts to that. I love this film.

Synecdoche, New York (2008)

The ultimate in onscreen theatrical performances that simply would not be possible in the real-world. We ultimately see an immense theatrical production taking place in an enormous New York warehouse. Over an unspecified number of years, an ensemble cast perform their roles as second lives in real time, and the stage grows and grows until it may be bigger than the world itself.

And it’s all kickstarted by a production of Death of a Salesman, which looks pretty grounded as onscreen theatrical productions go. Willy Loman’s briefcase becoming his tombstone is a very nice touch that I’m not sure I’ve ever seen elsewhere.

But nonetheless, its production is a headache for Philip Seymore Hoffman’s struggling director, who laments the sheer number of lighting cues requires for such a straightforward production. “Why do I make life so hard for myself?”

Charlie Kaufman’s directorial debut is miraculous, but he was by no means the first to explore these blurred boundaries between the real world and an impossibly elaborate stage production. We can also look to Peter Greenaway’s The Baby of Mâcon (1993), in which things get painfully, horribly real for an acting troupe in the court of Cosimo III de’ Medici.

…but as astounding as that film was, it’s not one I ever want to see again. Nor is it one I even want to think about, really. So let’s move on.

The Red Shoes (1948)

We’re entering the world of ballet now, where the sets and the staging can get pretty elaborate. I once saw a ballet production A Midsummer Night’s Dream which involved a number of full-size train carriages, which could be opened and flipped to show the interiors from two different angles, while also providing enough stability for Puck to prance atop them.

But still, the performance we see in The Red Shoes is grandiose even for a ballet. The set has considerable depth, with side-streets, interiors, and minute details that the audience couldn’t possibly see. Poetic licence, fine. It’s grand, but still somewhat grounded.

But then things get otherworldly. At one point the whole set seamlessly transforms into a night-time carnival, and numerous impossible things happen that are clearly the result of witchcraft rather than stagecraft. And then we see our heroine floating through a phantasmagorical landscape, and dancing with a piece of fabric that becomes a man-shaped newspaper, which in turn becomes a newspaper man, and we know that we’re not in Monaco anymore.

Over 15 uninterrupted minutes of pure Powell and Pressburger magic – this is the stuff of life, even if it does all end in tears.

Man On The Moon (1999)

The above video was uploaded just two months ago. It has no description and fewer than 50 views. There are five spelling mistakes in the 18 word title, and the channel that uploaded it seems to specialise in Australian kayaking videos. What I’m saying is that it seems unlikely that the video will stay up for very long. So if it’s gone by the time you’re reading it, know that it shows the climactic Carnegie Hall performance from 1999’s Man on the Moon.

Andy Kaufman has terminal lung cancer, and seemingly wants to do one last good thing, to make people happy. So he puts on an elaborate performance at Carnegie Hall, of which we see a few minutes. It opens with Andy playing his bongos and leading the audience in a gibberish singalong, before he brings on “the last surviving cowgirl” from a 1931 film. He asks the 94-year-old Eleanor to recreate her Jingle Jangle Jingle dance, and she gives it a go. But as Andy pushes her to go faster and faster, it proves too much, and she soon collapses.

The audience is horrified, as you would be, and Andy seems furious that his big night’s been interrupted by the death of a sweet old lady. But he knows just what to do! He starts some kind of offensive Native American chant, which miraculously revives dear old Eleanor. Cue the Halleluiah chorus from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, along with the Rockettes chorus line. And Santa!

Overwhelmed by goodwill, Andy offers to take the entire audience for milk and cookies. Which he does! There are coaches waiting outside, and enough milk and cookies for everyone in a nearby school cafeteria.

It’s a lovely scene that never fails to boost my mood. But the amazing thing is, this actually happened. Sort of.

Andy Kaufman really did perform at Carnegie Hall in 1979, and he really did take the audience for milk and cookies at the cafeteria of the New York School of Printing. And though that’s where things end in the film, in real life, Andy didn’t stop there. He invited the audience to join him the following morning for ice cream and wrestling on the Staten Island Ferry.

Robin Williams was somehow involved in the show, and described it as “P.T. Barnum meets Jung.” And behold, an 80 minute VHS recording of the whole thing! No Rockettes, Tabernacle Choir, or Santa, alas, but skip to 1:17 or so for some hot milk & cookie action: