A Chorus of Disapproval *** (1989, Jeremy Irons, Anthony Hopkins, Prunella Scales, Richard Briers, Gareth Hunt, Patsy Kensit, Jenny Seagrove, Sylvia Syms, Lionel Jeffries) – Classic Movie Review 7774

Alan Ayckbourn’s brilliant 1983 bittersweet comedy play A Chorus of Disapproval, originally performed at Britain’s National Theatre, comes to the screen in 1988 produced and directed by Michael Winner and with a starry, starry cast headed by Jeremy Irons, Anthony Hopkins, Prunella Scales, and Richard Briers. In his first produced screenplay, Ayckbourn co-writes the script with Winner.

Irons’s character Guy Jones moves to a new town – Scarborough in North Yorkshire, England – and seeks new personal contacts by joining an amateur theatre company dramatic society, P.A.L.O.S (the Pendon Amateur Light Operatic Society, which is led by a megalomaniac director Dafydd Ap Llewellyn (Anthony Hopkins) and his desperate wife Hannah Ap Llewellyn (Prunella Scales).

They are staging John Gay’s 1728 work The Beggar’s Opera. Guy Jones sees an advertisement saying: ‘MEET PEOPLE – HAVE FUN’. But instead of fun, creativity, co-operation and harmony, Guy Jones finds big egos, small talents, seduction, romance, jealousy, in-fighting, and actual fighting among the people he meets.

Hopkins and Scales are superb, and there is a very fine support cast, but Irons is miscast as an innocent hero and comedy is not really director Michael Winner’s forte. However, nothing can disguise that this is a funny, inventive comedy entertainment, one of the prolific and clever Mr Ayckbourn’s very best. It is filmed on locations in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, England. The cast rehearse and perform The Beggar’s Opera in the town’s Royal Opera House in St Thomas Street.

Also in the cast are Richard Briers, Gareth Hunt, Patsy Kensit, Jenny Seagrove, Sylvia Syms, Lionel Jeffries (in his final cinema movie), Alexandra Pigg, Barbara Ferris, and Pete Lee-Wilson.

A Chorus of Disapproval is directed by Michael Winner.

A Chorus of Disapproval is directed by Michael Winner, runs 100 minutes, is made by Curzon Films and Palisades Entertainment, is released by Hobo Film Enterprises (UK) and South Gate Entertainment (US), is written by Michael Winner and Alan Ayckbourn, is shot by Alan Jones, is produced by Michael Winner, Ron Purdie (associate producer), Andre Blay (presents) and Elliott Kastner (presents), and is scored by John Du Prez, with Art Direction by Peter Young. Winner is credited as Arnold Crust for the Film Editing (with Chris Barnes) and for the casting as Arnold Crust Jr.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7774

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