Chewing the Scenery

by Davina Elliott

A novel about a top West End production of a classic play, from the fist day of rehearsals to the curtain coming down on Press Night. Legendary leading lady, Judith Gold, is at loggerheads with avant-garde theatre director Alexander Columbus on a West End production of the ghostly comedy Blithe Spirit. Judith considers he is ruining an excellent play. an opinion shared by fellow cast members, movie star Rupert Blake and his possessive real life wife, the glamorous though selfish, Miranda Flynn. Alexander believes he has the ambitious young Scarlett Montgomery on his side, in addition to Echo, the vacuous American ex-beauty queen, who has virtually no theatre experience and even less talent. Isabelle Whiteside is only interested in whoever delivers the best gossip, while Adam Lane merely prays to overcome his chronic stage fright. For producer Wesley Barrett, what had promised to be the perfect project has turned into a theatrical nightmare, complete with unexploded bombs and air raid sirens in what is supposed to be a 1930s drawing room comedy.

Genres: Theatre

507 pages, Paperback

First published November 25, 2008

About the author

Davina Elliott has worked on over 80 theatre productions in a variety of jobs from dresser to small time producer. None of them includes performing. She lives in London with no children, no pets and is inseparable from her laptop called Leo.

Storming the Stage is her third novel, and is a sequel to Chewing the Scenery and Climbing the Curtain. Together they form the Judith Gold Trilogy.

Reviews

[Kathi]

Well, I'm not exactly sure how to rate this book, because I'm still uncertain whether it's supposed to be serious or a parody. It's too over the top to be serious, but it's not a good parody, either. First of all there was too much introduction, which was furthermore delivered in a rather unimaginative way: There's a chapter on every character depicting their previous lives until they start in the play "Blithe spirit", which is at the centre of this book (and, incidentally, going to open in West End in August 2014, I think? But anyway). This introduction takes the author about 80 pages and I almost thought we would never get any actual plot. This could have been done better.
Once the story starts we meet rather stereotypical characters: there's the completely clueless director, the old star, the overexcited newcomer, the playboy and his jealous wife, and the talentless young model from America who wants to try stage work and is unable to learn any lines.
All of them are thrown into this production and suffer from various obstacles and small and big desasters (e.g. an attempted suicide) until they finally manage to open the play, complete with world war II air raid sirens, which actually was funny in this context.
About halfway into the book I finally started getting into it, which was mainly because the characters weren't just as stereotypical anymore (but only slightly). The main character, Judith Gold, was, however, a stupid bitch, to say the least. In her attempts to save the play she completely stomps over everyone else and the needs of other people in a very tactless kind of way. This might be an interesting trade for a character in a book, but as she was the main character in this one it wasn't the best thing, because it made me hate her and be glad whenever she wasn't there.

So basically this wasn't a very good book in terms of character development (for all of them!) and writing of introduction, but I liked the general idea and the second half was kind of enjoyable and sometimes even funny, so this is why I still give it 3 stars. But I don't think I will buy book two or three, to be honest.

[Pauline]

Been ages since I've laughed out loud on a tube train!

Very, very funny, very spot on.

A production of Blythe Spirit is being put on in London, enter various characters, the brash, demanding American, the young, inexperienced starlet controlled by her overbearing mother, the hot, good-looking cad and his domineering, high expectation wife and a rubbish director among others. Sounds terrible?

It isn't! What follows is some mayhem and farce, some home truths and even some humanity, among the egos and gloss.

Great read! Loved it!