Bloody Ballad of Bette Davis
The legendary Bette Davis, a name synonymous with achievement, with resilience, with endurance, her film career spanning six decades, ten Academy Award nominations and two wins, with any hopes of smooth sailing hampered by the tempests of Hollywood and heartbreak as she also accrued four marriages and three children, her born again eldest Barbara “B D” Hyman having stated in one her volumes of accusatory memoir that her mother’s power was as much the result of a demonic pact as talent and determination.
The Davis legacy more often associated with melodrama than horror, there were exceptions such as Burnt Offerings, the 1976 television movie directed by The Night Stalker’s Dan Curtis which the struggling former star accepted out of desperation during her career doldrums, the true horror being the occurrences off camera in the antagonistic rivalries with the unreliable ostensible leads of the project, the notorious British hellraiser Oliver Reed and Karen Black, a star ascending on the wings of a Boeing 747 courtesy of Airport 1975.
Bloody Ballad of Bette Davis an interpretation of the alleged events of that fraught shoot, taking place between April and October 1975, astonishingly completed under budget and on time, it is written and directed by John P McEneny with music composed by Rob Parker, starring Annie Meek Montgomery as the formidable Davis, Connor Delves as Black, untroubled by deep thoughts, and Aaron Novak as the uncontrollable entity known as Reed, once cursed by lycanthropy and now staking his claim on the stage from the opening tableaux and oozing booze rather than sweat through his polyester slacks as he continues to mark his territory.
A crumpled love letter to seventies Hollywood put to song as the ensemble fill the stage with antics and anecdotes, behind her trademark sunglasses and cigarette whether Davis was a witch or merely a bitch she was utterly dedicated to her craft and deserved more respect than she was offered, but the ghosts of the house are her own failures which continue to haunt her, Montgomery magnificent as the flame of greatness flickering in the storm, her eyes full of tears and her lip quivering, the survivor who will turn her hand to anything except quitting.
Bloody Ballad of Bette Davis continues at C Aurora until Sunday 18th August
