Staircase (play)
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Staircase is a two-character play by Charles Dyer about an aging gay couple who own a barber shop in the East End of London. One of them is a part-time actor about to go on trial for propositioning a police officer. The action takes place over the course of one night as they discuss their loving but often volatile past together and possible future without each other.
The playwright named his characters Charles Dyer (after himself) and Harry C. Leeds, which is an anagram of his name.
In 1966 it was produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company with Paul Scofield and Patrick Magee.
The Broadway production directed by Barry Morse opened on January 10, 1968 at the Biltmore Theatre, where it played for 12 previews and 61 performances. Eli Wallach and Milo O'Shea, who was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play, starred.
[edit] Film adaptation
| Staircase | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Stanley Donen |
| Produced by | Stanley Donen |
| Written by | Charles Dyer |
| Starring | Rex Harrison Richard Burton |
| Music by | Dudley Moore |
| Distributed by | Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation |
| Release date(s) | 1969 |
| Running time | 96 min |
| Country | France |
| IMDb profile | |
Dyer adapted his play for a 1969 Twentieth Century-Fox film directed by Stanley Donen. He opened up the script to show the couple's neighborhood, expanded the action to cover a period of ten days, and added characters. Rex Harrison and Richard Burton portrayed the couple and Cathleen Nesbitt and Beatrix Lehmann were featured as their mothers.
Because of Great Britain's tax laws, the stars insisted that the film be shot in Paris, which added to the film's budget, already inflated by their salaries ($1 million for Harrison, $1.25 million for Burton).
The film's score was composed by Dudley Moore.
The film was rated R by the MPAA. Instead of marketing it as the comedy-drama it was, the studio treated it like a camp comedy. It was panned by most critics, including Roger Ebert, who gave it one star in his review and called it "an unpleasant exercise in bad taste . . . [Donen] gives us no warmth, humor or even the dregs of understanding. He exploits the improbable team of Rex Harrison and Richard Burton as a sideshow attraction." [1]. The film was a commercial failure that lost most of its investment.
Rarely seen on television, the film was broadcast by Turner Classic Movies during its June 2007 tribute to gay cinema. It is not available on DVD at the present time.
