Evening Standard from London, Greater London, England • 3

EVENING STANDARD WEDNESDAY 23 SEPTEMBER 1 998 3 0 She lights up room with a fierce glamour knew she fat we knew look pretty good but SHANE WATSON scrutinises Nicole Kidman as she makes her debut on the London stage and is mesmerised by the measurements FIRSTNIGHT by Nicholas de Jongh The Blue Room Donmar Warehouse TOWARDS the end of The Blue Room Iain character remarks that he has a problem with the theatre finding a parking space and eating late Everyone titters because the obstacles that stand between the theatre-goer and die work are familiar to us all: the temptation to fall asleep in the cocooning dark restricted leg space and light-headedness induced by gin and tonics downed at breakneck speed during the interval But with the latest production a new and far more potent distraction has been added to the list the presence of Nicole Kidman As someone who has attended umpteen fashion shows I thought I was immune to body shock that wave of awe disbelief and appreciation tinged with a sense of the unfairness of life that hits you the first few times you see a Schiffer or a Christensen draped in a chiffon hanky That feeling returns maybe three or four times before you grow used to seeing examples of physical near-perfection and nothing less will do At this point actresses even in the frame They may have a pretty face nice legs but never the complete package that can stand up to the glare of the cat-walk lights let alone the scrutiny of the front row But when Nicole Kidman sashayed on to the stage at the start of The Blue Room slipped off her leather coat and stood there in a pink stretch mini and T-shirt I felt it all over again awe disbelief appreciation the quick flashback to the two packets of crisps at lunch the onset of mild depression Kidman has the two essentials required for full-on body shock a blemish-free physique and the kind of springy graceful movement you only find in dancers and top models But she has an added advantage the element of surprise We knew she fat we knew look pretty good but this! A figure (narrow hips bosoms at armpit level long rangy legs no repeat no cellulite or any interruptions to the all-over moonstone skin) that not only matches up to the best but would be exceptional on a 20-year-old Whereas Nicole is 31 All of which adds up to an evening spent mesmerised by the leading measurements While others were watching the scene unfold between the young model and the politician I was craning my neck to see if when she crossed her legs the one underneath showed signs of crgpiness None The scene with the wife and the younger man ask me I was concentrating on the black searching for signs of bottom bulge or unsightly chicken-joint effect in the high-cut front None During the modelplaywright scene while others applauded the naked cartwheeling Glen I was concentrating on her removing her bra under her vest (the moment when the Kidman heel would be revealed surely) No visible difference This fixation with bodily perfection is of course exclusively a girl thing The men who see Kidman acting in a variety of underwear and sometimes nothing at all will simply enjoy the experience throughout Our enjoyment is of a different kind part aesthetic pleasure part competitive instinct with a large dose of voyeurism the same with women on a beach never looking at the man only at each other I told a friend about The Blue Room made a cursory attempt at summing up the plot and then mentioned the Kidman body idea of she gasped hours just checking it out do they still have IT WAS WHEN they hauled on a very smart kitchen-sink unit setting the scene for a seduction of an au pair girl that I began to feel David Hare was artfully diluting an original bitter sexual cocktail His Blue Room filters the twilight world of the heterosexual through an opulent glow of modishness Hare has played loose and clever with a famous old Austrian play: in Arthur La Ronde 10 couples guiltily find pleasure in each other before they separate and are linked in a sexual daisy-chain So gentle comedy of sexual manners displaces serious drama of sex and betrayal The change is not always for the theatrical better But there remains at least one alluring compensation not to say come-on All five females are played in varieties of figure-hugging titillatingly minimal dress by Nicole Kidman who proves more to her than meets the eye lain Glen as her various partners in sex is eventually reduced to his bare essentials as if to prove he can mount as spectacular an erotic show Sexual relations though as Schnitzler conveyed them undergo a sea-change thanks to devising He transports the original from the Vienna of 1898 to rich London 1998 Sam production with Mark Thompson as his designer oozes flashy post-modern sumptuousness The stage shimmers in blue light and neon signs with film captions and crackling electronic sounds to signal the time taken before orgasm Since Kidman and Glen look like models they give the sexual encounters a fierce glamour Their couplings in modish beds luxurious places or even a designer brothel advertise sex as a recreation for chic rich beautiflil people original was more earthy and tense It roamed around Vienna with sex furtively undertaken in parkland and parlour drawing room and whore-house His characters dared to defy rigid class and marriage barriers The tone was suitably serious-sardonic: in those days syphilis killed adultery really wrecked lives There was no state-aid to save pregnant servant girls from ruin cast of Nineties characters live in a world from which such serious worries have mainly vanished His au pair girl coke-taking teenage model adulterous New Labour politician West End actress and student seducer are pained but not ruined by desire Hare therefore arranges a far lighter comedy of sexual manners without real after-doses of pain when encounters end Only his smug politician specialising in and has much social though not sexual bite to him Miss Kidman lacks much theatrical experience But all five roles are in her elegant confident grasp firmly set in the glow of her sex appeal So not that much difference in the manners of her French au pair and cockney tart But she manages all the accents and attitudes in neatly provocative performances She slips into sex play and display to the manner born sending up the role of an actress in fiill preen super-cool hip production relies more on the smartness of its atmosphere than emotions No surprise then that Glen usually a front-rank truthfiil actor gives a disappointingly histrionic set of performances Only as an aristocrat wreathed in old-fashioned anxieties does Glen really enthuse interesting view of how desire makes fools of us all Ratings: -O adequate good very good outstanding Xpoor More reviews: Page 52 new and far more potent Nicole Kidman who is starring in The Blue Room and below with co-star lain Glen The Daily Mail: The evening is a triumph for Ms Kidman who is as stunning on stage as she was in films such as To Die For and Dead Calm writes Christopher Tookey The Daily Telegraph: Most of the time I had eyes only for Nicole Kidman writes Charles Spencer Eyes on stalks in fact pure theatrical Viagra The Times: Kidman is excellent varying from a sensuous au pair to a power-mad diva from a drugged-up model to a wife writes Benedict Nightingale The Guardian: Kidman switches personae with consummate ease She is not just a star: she genuinely delivers the goods writes Michael BUlington The Express: I think of a British actress who could have done it better writes Robert Gore-Langton.