The West End is in trouble - so it's reaching for the stars. It's not simply that big names are popping up everywhere: plays are turning inwards, making subjects out of themselves. The three big London openings this week are all about actors.

[deleted review of Kiss Me Kate]

'May God strike me dead if I ever appear in an all-star revival,' rasps Judi Dench as the matriarch and sometimes termagant in The Royal Family . Peter Hall's star-stuffed but stodgy production of this 1927 play proves that any actor should share her qualms.

George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber wrote The Royal Family with an eye on the American acting dynasties of the Barrymores and the Drews. They had plenty of material to draw on: Lionel Barrymore called acting 'the family curse'; his brother John was so handsome that he was known as 'the Great Profile'; their sister Ethel turned down Winston Churchill's proposal of marriage, explaining that she preferred to act. Kaufman and Ferber offered her a part in The Royal Family . She threatened to sue.

It's hard to see why she felt so aggrieved. This satire on the off-stage life of actors is hardly biting. Its taunts - that thesps make a lot of noise, are constantly rehearsing their effects, and make any non-actors feel excluded by their obsessions - are predictable, non-specific and cosy. Its characters are stock. A young blade gets into scrapes and love-affairs; his sister spends a lot on caviar and hats, often threatens to give up acting to marry her millionaire - but never misses a cue. Her daughter absconds from her thespian destiny only to have a bit of a break and a baby. Granny controls the lot of them with her temper and fainting fits. Though they all do a lot of flouncing, each is given their moment of professional pride.

Lively lines drift across a plot that doesn't so much develop as wind down: 'Marriage isn't a career. It's an incident,' pronounces Dench, with one of those lifts of the chin that quells opposition. But for the most part Dench has too little to do - at least, too little that's surprising - to be at her best. Which is also true of Harriet Walter, Philip Voss, Peter Bowles. As a star vehicle, this is a charabanc, with everyone in holiday style overbeing who they are. Emily Blunt makes a lovely debut as the ingénue. Julia McKenzie is funny and touching as the squat matron who thinks of herself as a wand-like heroine. And Toby Stephens - who should be at home in theatrical dynasties (son of Robert Stephens and Maggie Smith) - lifts the temperature each time he leaps onto the stage as an Errol Flynn-style buccaneer.

But lots of running up and down staircases, and slamming of doors doesn't make for urgency. Lots of people talking at the same time doesn't move along a slow tale. A showcase of talent doesn't make a strong show.

[deleted review of Star Quality]

This review which appeared in the Sunday Times on November 4, 2001.

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