5 STARS, July 6. Make sure to get yourself down to the back room of Guildford's Star Inn tonight to see an unbelievable piece of original theatre, says Janice Dempsey
Sex is Another Language, a new play by Tony Earnshaw, brings the late Elizabeth Taylor vividly to life. Glorying in her sexual magnetism, unashamedly hedonistic, she commands the stage, speaking of her loves, her friendships, her Hollywood career, her dreams and her disappointments. And yet this is not a portrait of a stereotypical diva. I left the performance at Leith Hill Place feeling that I had been introduced to a complex, warm human being as well as an intense, dramatic personality.
We meet Liz Taylor in middle age, distraught and wailing for a drink after losing the love of her life. She looks back on her journey from early child-stardom in “National Velvet”, through six marriages before the age of thirty-two, a glamorous Hollywood career, a spiral into addiction, cure and relapse.
In this intimate conversational production, Liz Taylor addresses us sometimes as “all of you out there”, but more often as “Michael”. Listening to her memories, we seem to be deputising for Michael Jackson, whom Liz recognised as a kindred spirit, equally damaged by an unhappy childhood and equally ready to use his wealth to escape into Neverland. Their strange relationship became legendary after the death of her other soul-mate, Richard Burton. But it seems to be Mike Todd, the father of her children, whose death she’s mourning in her opening lines.
“Sex is what drives us, friendship is what rescues us,” says Liz. We learn that not all her relationships with men were based on sexual love: in the 1980’s the death from AIDS of Rock Hudson helped her to gain fund research into its cure, and she admits that she loved him as her very dear friend, not her lover.
Her long, passionate and mutually destructive relationship with Richard Burton was quite another matter. The harrowing emotional rollercoaster of it, the addiction to alcohol and drugs that accompanied it and her grief at his death brought tears to my eyes.
Claire Malcolmson gives a bravura performance. From the first moment onstage she is alternately spitting contempt and anger, boasting and reliving her many marriages, the fun, the despair and the grief when she lost the men who supported and fed off her talent and beauty. Not that this is a depressing account of Liz Taylor’s chaotic life. Over and over again humour breaks through after the most intense moments, as Taylor proudly gathers her strength up and presses on along the turbulent path that she has chosen.
This woman who was in films as a child actress (“I never had a supporting partner with fewer than four legs till I was sixteen!”), and who felt her life circumscribed by fame, learned to use her power to help others at the last. Sex was a language she mastered, but friendship was what gave her life meaning.
Sex is Another Language is showing in the Back Room of the Star in Guildford as part of the Guildford Fringe Festival, from 6th July – powerful theatre – don’t miss it!
Tickets: guildfordfringefestival.com
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