At one point in this very strange musical about backstage drama at a Broadway play, a character remarks that “half the audience loved it, half the audience hated it’’. Those words may well become the epitaph for the collaboration between singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright and that ever-provocative Belgian director Ivo Van Hove.
It’s a long time since I saw a show that seemed so determined to wrongfoot everyone. The songs and the script are occasionally inspired, but more often maddeningly opaque. God knows what Smith’s army of admirers will make of it all. Shirley Valentine this is not.
Still, Smith, who has had to contend with her share of personal demons, deserves credit for taking on the role of an actress who is suffering a meltdown.
