Me and Orson Welles
Thursday–Sunday
May 3–6
Davies Theatre
6 + 8:30 pm
In a whirlwind week in 1937, a stage-struck high-school student (Zac Efron) lands a role with the newly founded Mercury Theatre company on the eve of the opening of its historic modern-dress production of Julius Caesar. He becomes immersed in a creative experience that few are afforded, finds romance, and learns the consequences of crossing the brilliant and imperious 22-year-old Orson Welles.
“Christian McKay’s Welles impersonation is so accurate as to be spooky, and despite the film’s obligatory (albeit charming) rom-com trappings, I’ve never seen a backstage movie that was truer to the experience of putting on a show,” wrote Terry Teachout, drama critic of The Wall Street Journal. Teachout reserved special praise for the design team's recreation of Welles' production of Caesar.
"Like most Welles stage shows, alas, this one left few traces," Teachout wrote. "No part of the production was filmed, and nothing else survives but the design sketches and some still photographs taken in 1937. ... What makes Me and Orson Welles uniquely interesting to scholars of American drama is that Mr. Linklater's design team found the Gaiety Theatre on the Isle of Man. This house closely resembles the old Comedy Theatre on 41st Street, which was torn down five years after Julius Caesar opened there. Using Samuel Leve's original designs, they reconstructed the set for Julius Caesar on the Gaiety's stage. Then Mr. Linklater filmed some 15 minutes' worth of scenes from the play, lit according to Jean Rosenthal's plot, accompanied by Marc Blitzstein's original incidental music and staged in a style as close to that of the 1937 production as is now possible.
”If you care at all about Mr. Welles, or the history of Shakespeare production in America," Teachout concluded, "you owe it to yourself to watch Me and Orson Welles and find out what you missed by being born too late.”
May 6 would be the 97th birthday of Orson Welles (1915–1985), an actor, director, writer and producer renowned for his innovative work in theater, radio and film. Born in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Welles created the groundbreaking Broadway adapation of Julius Caesar that is the subject of this film; The War of the Worlds (1938), the most famous broadcast in the history of radio; and Citizen Kane (1941), which many critics and scholars name as the best film of all time.
Sponsored by the UW-Eau Claire International Film Society
Admission is free at the door with a Blugold Card or an International Film Society membership. Community members may buy an individual IFS membership for $4; a family membership costs $10. The annual memberships are available at the Service Center, 715-836-3727, in Davies Center’s east lobby.
FILM INFORMATION
United Kingdom + United States 2008
111 minutes
Color
Rated PG-13 for sexual references and smoking
Directed by Richard Linklater
MORE INFORMATION
Official Site
Internet Movie Database
Wikipedia
Metacritic
Terry Teachout, "Great Caesar's Ghost!" (About Last Night)
