Smoking with Lulu

Synopsis

Smoking with Lulu is based on Kenneth Tynan's Profile of Louise Brooks, written when he finally teased her out of reclusive retirement for an interview when she was 71 - after a lifetime of fantasising about her screen persona. He discovers that age has not withered her infinite capacity to fascinate him. This three-hander is intercut with footage from Pabst's Pandora's Box and spliced with Tynan's erotic fantasies of Lulu.

Our Review:

18 February 2002

Janet Munsil's play has a fascinating premise. In 1978 the brilliant drama critic Kenneth Tynan persuaded Louise Brooks, reclusive silent-film goddess of the 1920s, to let him interview her over several days for a New Yorker magazine profile. They found they had much more in common than just chain-smoking.

The iconoclastic Tynan had long idolised Brooks' sultry screen image, drawn to her decadent, self-destructive glamour and identifying with her sexually liberated free spirit. Their meeting had a profound effect on both of them. Ironically, the resulting article helped to revive interest in the almost forgotten Brooks, but within a year Tynan had died from emphysema.

Unfortunately, the dramatic potential of this encounter is not realised here. Munsil's writing is intelligent, sometimes witty, but the play's structure is weak and there's insufficient tension. The two protagonists do quarrel at one point, but there isn't enough sense of inner conflict. The result i...

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Latest User Review

USER: Whatsonstage.com - 8 March 2002:

Having seen this play twice in Canada I can say it just keeps getting better, sexier and even more delicious. Bravo to the Soho for taking a chance....

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