In 1938 Julia Lambert (Annette Bening) is a darling of London theatre. Her manager (Jeremy Irons) also happens to be her husband in what is described as a ‘terribly modern’ arrangement. But Julia has a nervous eye on approaching middle age and when an enthusiastic, star-struck American (Shaun Evans) arrives, her world is rocked with the calculated abandon of a true thespian. She is at the peak of her career yet terrified by the looming decline, a recurring theme and one of Being Julia’s many delights. Mid-life crisis, so the reasoning goes, should be neatly deflected by a torrid affair with the young man. Certainly the ghost of her deceased mentor (a scene-stealing Michael Gambon) thinks so.

Director Istvan Szabo (Taking Sides) suggest that all is an illusion and in truth, his film is a thin conceit whisked into something much fluffier by Bening’s award-nominated performance. Irons, Gambon, Juliet Stevenson and Miriam Margolyes are offset gems who sparkle around her diamond-diva presence. She laughs, cries, shrieks and bites with delicious, self-centred hedonism, bringing a giddy effervescence to this gloriously synthetic production, one totally in step with the story and its fickle times. It was an era in which Chamberlain promised peace – code for delusion and the state in which Lambert lives.

Being Julia is a witty, often spiteful romp; a hugely enjoyable adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham’s Theatre wherein Bening’s comic timing perfectly captures the shrill melodrama of her world and its sphere of influence.

// COLIN FRASER