Word: campions
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...hindsight, is it so surprising that the couple didn't last? She was only 23 when they married. Since then, she has tried to define herself--and has succeeded in charming the critics--by working with fiercely independent directors like Gus Van Sant (To Die For) and Jane Campion (The Portrait of a Lady) and appearing onstage in David Hare's The Blue Room...
...wrote the play for Hill, who co-starred in an early version staged in Belfast in 1994. Campion was recruited later when the play was remounted at Belfast's Lyric Theater in May 1999. The two actors have been joined at the hip ever since, as the play traveled to Dublin and Edinburgh and eventually to London's West End. (During one break, they co-starred as the tramps in Waiting for Godot. What's Irish for "busman's holiday"?) Hill, 36, the pudgy, cherub-faced one, grew up in Ballycastle, on the northeast coast. Campion, 41, the angular, rugged...
...disruptive effect on a small Irish town when a big Hollywood film crew sets up shop. The play, a sellout hit in London and winner of the Olivier Award for best comedy of last year, has arrived in New York with its production virtually unchanged. That includes, most crucially, Campion and Hill in the leading--and only--roles. They play two locals working on the film as extras, as well as (a gimmick born of economic necessity when the play was first staged in Belfast) every other character, from the diva-like Hollywood star and harried assistant director...
...been rejected from the movie (and by the star he idolizes) drowns himself, a tragedy that raises, without a great deal of huffing and puffing, the dark side of Hollywood's dream factory. The play's real triumph, though, is the showcase it provides for the breathtaking virtuosity of Campion and Hill. They slide in and out of some 15 characters so deftly (a stoop here, a thrust-out chest there) and with such mutual precision that you feel you're watching not 15 people onstage, or even two, but one actor with two interlocking, constantly morphing sets of body...
...central to drama that comes out of Northern Ireland. "All we've ever wanted to do in the North was tell our own story in our own way," he says. "But it's not sexy enough to be having struggles in your life that weren't political." Campion has his own beefs about the way Ireland is portrayed onscreen. "You like to think if people are doing a project they have a responsibility to be accurate," he says. "It isn't a huge amount to ask." Stones in His Pockets is at least one step in the right direction...