My first trip to London’s newest pub theatre, the Stage Door above the Prince of Wales’s pub, Drury Lane, sees Claudio Macor’s play The Tailor-Made Man revived in traverse.
Billy Haines was a huge film star who was successful in both silent and talking pictures. Signed by Goldwyn and later MGM, he was wildly popular with female fans but seen as difficult, not least because he was openly and unapologetically gay.
Dominating the box office opposite leading ladies such as Mary Pickford, Joan Crawford and Marion Davies.his good looks and easy charm came across well but also got him into trouble in his private life.
Macor has revised his 1997 play, which was also made into a musical in 2013, to focus more on six leading characters. Haines, Davies, Haines’s long-term partner Jimmie Shields, studio head Louis B Mayer, PR fixer Howard Strickland, and screenwriter ‘Victor Darro’.
Haines is coached and tailored into a movie star, and the play addresses both his star persona and his relationship with Shields. Mayer is particularly abrasive about his romantic life, and longs for a chance to get rid of him.
MGM ensured that the films made by Haines were locked away for years after his downfall. These days, from a twelve-year body of work, 16 films are incomplete or lost, representing half of his career. I’ve seen 10 of his films. Clearly a born performer.
The Tailor-Made Man, directed by Robert McWhir and designed by David Shields, has set pieces at either end of the space and a main performance area on the floor between two sets of tables. Sight lines may and do vary depending on where you choose to sit.
Hugo Pitcher, in his London theatre debut, is a very buff and almost brash Haines, playing the game of stardom but pushing at its limits. His scenes with Gwithian Evans’s Shields are sweet and believable, especially late in act two when reality bites hard on both of them.
As Mayer, Dereck Walker is skin-crawling in his homophobia and determination to protect only the right sort of stars, or as long as they bring in the money. Peter Rae’s Strickling is more sympathetic, but still a cog in the studio system.
I liked Shelley Rivers as a dirty-talking, broad-minded, and caring Marion Davies. The glimpse of her and Haines shooting Show People could have been less sweeping gesture, but that’s common shorthand for silent screen performance. I recommend you seek a copy of the real thing.
Other characters mentioned or shown include Pola Negri and Carole Lombard (both captured well by Olivia Ruggiero), King Vidor, Harry Cohn, Clark Gable, and Billy Wilder.
The story depicted here is broadly true, with a few years switched here and there, and Haines’s later success as a Beverly Hills interior designer is justly celebrated.
The Tailor-Made Man is a well-written, sharp and engrossing real-life drama which shines a light on ‘Hollywood’s scandalous cover-up’. Haines isn’t forgotten any more.
The Tailor-Made Man continues at Stage Door Theatre until 18 May, then returns 4-12 Jun. You can purchase dining +show tickets, or show only by visiting http://stagedoortheatre.co.uk.
Stage Door Theatre is run by LAMBCO Productions.
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Image credit: Peter Davies