Upstaged by the king, an actor in drag straightens out

A. Scott

"Stage Beauty" takes place in London during the reign of Charles II, an era of curly wigs and knee breeches much beloved by connoisseurs of high-end costume drama. It was a thoroughly theatrical age, and Richard Eyre's new film, based on a play by Jeffrey Hatcher, feasts on both its on- and offstage spectacles. Not the least of these is the monarch himself, played with perfumed hamminess by Rupert Everett. His consort is the brassy cockney music-hall performer Nell Gwynn (Zoë Tapper), and compared with their over-the-top royal shtick, the doings of ordinary actors, which are the film's main concern, look downright banal. But Nell and Charlie bolster one of the movie's historical insights: that in 17th-century England, politics were as theatrical as theater was political. Though the playhouses, shut by Puritan zealots earlier in the century, reopened soon after the Catholic Stuarts regained the throne, the old rules forbidding women to appear in them were still in effect. As in Shakespeare's time, all the female roles were played by men.