Queen Bette

Jeanette Cronin may not be well-known but I’ve always admired her acting, so often brash or droll, with that outsider quality to cut through.  In this return of her solo show, co-written with and directed by Peter Mountford, she is perfectly cast to give us 80 absorbing minutes of Bette Davis.   And it’s not just her uncannily similar appearance.

Queen Bette is drawn from Davis’ own interviews and her memoir, A Lonely Life.  While we’re teased with some of her famous lines, this is no fandom or tabloid homage to Hollywood campery.  

At pace we skip through her sad and poor childhood with her sister, reared in New England and then New York by their mother.  Driving the story is Davis’ first training, her distinctive dancer’s physicality, her defiance to pursue character over ego and beauty, and later her profound grasp of film acting and its possibilities in the early days of the talkies. 

Indeed, the obsessive, uncompromising nature of her artistry and her struggles and personal sacrifices as a woman are the two threads of this thoughtful Queen Bette. Ever present is Davis’ sentimentalised memory of her indefatigable mother and her landmark role (twice) playing Elizabeth I, with which Cronin begins and ends her show. 

While her 1937 battle for independence from Warner Brothers is explored, Queen Bette ends when Davis is little past 30. 

Cronin evokes quick memories and snaps of film, moving smoothly through an open space staging nicely punctuated with furniture, costume parts and memorabilia. Jaz McGuire’s nimble, atmospheric spotlighting gives her great support.   Only rarely does Cronin fail to hit and and fully exploit every captured memory through the show’s welcome quicksilver pace.

With eyes as wide as her Massachusetts accent, Cronin triumphantly embodies Davis’ cheeky wit and artificiality mixed so uniquely, and so nervously, with her raw emotion and truth.

Martin Portus