The Great Lillian Hall

Lillian Hall is a Broadway actress who has never missed a performance in a long career. Rehearsals begin for a new play and the lines stop holding. At first she thinks it is tiredness. Then she forgets where she is on stage. Her assistant notices, her daughter worries and the director loses patience. Lillian tells nobody the diagnosis and insists on opening the play. Michael Cristofer directs. Jessica Lange plays Lillian, Kathy Bates plays her assistant and Lily Rabe plays her daughter, with Pierce Brosnan in the cast. The subject is not illness but a profession becoming an identity. Lillian does not know what would be left if she came off the stage, and she makes every decision accordingly. The rehearsal scenes are the best thing in it; the hierarchy inside a theatre and how a production is assembled are shown in detail. Jessica Lange plays the part without ever asking for pity; the character is difficult, stubborn and unfair to the people around her. Kathy Bates's assistant is the second strand and the scenes between the two are at the centre. Its limit is its shape; the illness narrative follows familiar stages and the ending leans on an emotional peak. Who it is for: viewers who like performance driven drama and stories about the theatre. Who it is not for: the subject is heavy, the narrative is predictable, and the supporting characters are not worked enough.