The Daily Telegraph - Features

Mother of God! Line of Duty’s Adrian Dunbar can actually sing

Bulls, Biskind describes how the French spouse of the studio’s then-owner, Charles Bluhdorn, sweet-talked her husband into hiring him. “He’s gorgeous,” she reportedly told him. “We’ve got to get a good-looking guy, real sexy, to run the company.”

So he did. The appointmen­t, Biskind notes, was widely regarded as “bizarre, even by Hollywood standards”. But there was a mad alchemy to it that worked. Evans had a gift for keeping the talent sweet, and a habit of betting big on talented young directors who had just weathered a flop. And while he often fought with his creatives, he would just as often back them to the hilt.

Evans’s tenure may have been chaotic, but it restored a sense of purpose at Paramount that had been lost when the studio’s cinema-operating and film-making arms were broken up after a high-profile court case in the late 1940s. When it was founded in 1912 as the Famous Players Film Company, the studio had quickly made its trademark old-world sophistica­tion and glamour, with help from suave émigré directors like Josef von Sternberg and Ernst Lubitsch. Almost single-handedly, Evans burnished that lustre again.

That ambition and cosmopolit­anism bears little relation to Paramount in the 21st century, whose driving creative philosophy has essentiall­y been “throw a lot of money at Tom Cruise”. To be clear, there are many worse creative philosophi­es than that – but it works only when your customers are throwing money back. And as the middling box office take for last year’s Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One showed, even having the planet’s biggest movie star drive a motorcycle off a cliff isn’t enough to tide you through a rough patch. So any sale – if and when one finally occurs – will likely be followed by a floor-toceiling artistic rethink.

In truth, such a revamp couldn’t come soon enough. The studio’s three current CEOs are the sort of dyed-in-the-wool executives it’s impossible to imagine turning up at work in deluxe nightwear or giving evidence at a murder trial. One, Brian Robbins, was a filmmaker at one point – though his directing credits include eight-time Golden Raspberry nominee Norbit.

So the vacancy for this generation’s Robert Evans remains open – though it’s admittedly impossible to anticipate who that sort of figure might be (and whether today’s cautious HR execs would even allow him into the cockpit).

Yet the fact remains that no one anticipate­d who Robert Evans’s generation’s Robert Evans would be either. But how fortunate that Hollywood back then was bold – and mad – enough to imagine Robert Evans might be it.

Evans, his back injured, had his butler wheel him to the screening in a motorised cot

Bent coppers can rest easy this summer – unless they’ve got a particular aversion to showtunes, that is. Line of Duty’s Adrian Dunbar has swapped AC-12 for Cole Porter as he makes his belated profession­al musical theatre debut, and if I were questioned by an officer at least one rank senior, I would freely admit that he acquits himself well in this glorious Golden Age spectacula­r.

Dunbar plays Fred Graham, the director and leading man of an American musical version of The Taming of the Shrew. He has recruited ex-wife Lilli Vanessi, now a Hollywood star, to play Katharine opposite his Petruchio, but the battle of wills in this spiky comedy is soon mirrored by the divorced couple’s all-out war.

Bartlett Sher’s sumptuous production is particular­ly well attuned to Sam and Bella Spewack’s wittily Shakespear­ean play-within-a-play conceit, using a busy revolve that constantly whisks us between onstage and backstage (marvellous lofty design by Michael Yeargan). In one bravura sequence, an argument erupts mid-show, then continues as Lilli and Fred storm into the wings and then their dressing rooms, the fast-changing set matching their rising tempers and blurred boundaries.

Dunbar lacks Fred’s monstrous ego, but does passionate­ly convey his lifelong commitment to his craft. He lands the wry aphorisms with audience-charming aplomb, and, in Fred’s paean to past lovers, has fun with Porter’s deeply silly cod-Italian rhymes (“My BeckyWecky-oh”/“Ponte Vecchio”). He has a lovely crooning voice, even if his accent wanders and his dancing is more stairlift than Astaire.

The knockout turn comes from Tony-winner Stephanie J Block. She brilliantl­y layers her fiery dual roles, making it more about Lilli finding herself than a man, and she’s a simply divine singer, skilfully changing up the rhythms in So in Love to reflect her turbulent emotions and delivering show-stopping coloratura.

Peter Davison is a hoot as the general with a roving eye, Charlie Stemp supplies sensationa­l tap dancing and cheeky charisma, and the magnificen­t Georgina Onuorah rescues the uncomforta­ble MeToo subplot which sees much-older men, including the director, take advantage of ingénue Lois. She’s very much in charge here, making Always True to You in My Fashion a girl-power triumph.

There are other significan­t changes that address the dated sexual politics. Fred no longer spanks Lilli (he comes close, but is halted by his castmates’ censorious stares), and he addresses us directly, acknowledg­ing that “contempora­ry audiences find it difficult” to see Petruchio aggressive­ly taming his shrew.

But there are also nostalgic pleasures galore: Catherine Zuber’s fabulous 1940s fashions, Anthony Van Laast’s Jerome Robbins-style choreograp­hy in Too Darn Hot (led by an explosivel­y exciting Jack Butterwort­h), and Nigel Lindsay and Hammed Animashaun’s hilarious Runyonesqu­e theatre-enthusiast gangsters.

The only bizarre directoria­l choice is cutting out a section of the stage for the orchestra pit, stranding the performers too far back and essentiall­y creating a giant pothole that you feel someone is bound to tumble into. Otherwise, this cleverly retuned classic show has all the makings of a sizzling summer hit.

Until Sept 14. Tickets: 020 7870 2500; barbican.org.uk