I'LL EAT YOU LAST
I’LL EAT YOU LAST, Fairfax Studio, Arts Centre, MELBOURNE, 31 October- 20 December 2014. Photography by Jeff Busby: Miriam Margolyes and joint.
It’s likely that unless they’re Hollywood tragics most members of the audience will have not a clue who Sue Mengers was and are in the theatre to see the one and only Miriam Margolyes. And sure, they get Margolyes – 90-spellbinding-minutes’-worth – but as she breathes life into one of the more fascinating figures of mid-20th century Hollywood, a rarely seen other side to Margolyes is also revealed. In I’ll Eat You Last, with director Dean Bryant and voice and dialect coach Leith McPherson, she develops and sustains a single character, in depth and with great conviction throughout. It’s what’s known as a tour de force performance – and an uncommonly subtle and moving one too.
Written by John Logan from, among other sources, an unpublished transcript of a lengthy interview for Vanity Fair, the playwright has Mengers telling her own story to a bunch of nobodies (us) while she lounges on a couch in her Beverly Hills mansion, waiting for a bunch of twinklies (stars) to arrive for dinner.
It begins with an only child and Jewish refugee leaving Hitler’s Germany with her parents and enduring an even more daunting experience: grade school in America. Her English is poor, heavily accented; she is small and short-sighted. Briefly the now 73-year-old Margolyes uncannily morphs into the frightened child as she takes her courage in both hands and introduces herself to the most popular girl in school. That girl’s response sets Mengers on her life’s path: she will ever after always seize on a half open window of opportunity, jemmy it open and squeeze through to grab what’s on the other side.
Starting out as a lowly receptionist at the fabled William Morris Agency in New York, the youthful menial is soon swanning around town introducing herself as “Sue Mengers, from the William Morris Agency”. Eventually her chutzpah pays off and she’s taken on by a new outfit as an artist’s agent. It helps that she had previously spotted another gawky-geeky Jewish girl at an obscure gay bar and therefore knew and had nurtured Streisand when she still had three A’s in her first name. And her first client was the great Julie Harris (look her up, infants and also look up Bonanza while you’re at it).
Once in Hollywood her list of clients becomes among the starriest of the day at a time when the stars’ agent is a star in his or her own right. The story of how she goes the extra mile – albeit in her own Bentley – to get Gene Hackman the role of Popeye Doyle in The French Connection (and an Oscar and whole new and great career) is just one of a series of anecdotes that are captivating in their own right and, through Margolyes’ richly detailed performance, downright engrossing.
As Mengers says, it’s all about the gossip and knowing things someone else doesn’t know. Although laid out with great humour, what Miriam/Mengers reveals about how to be successful – with fragile egos and monstrous talents – should probably mean taking out a notebook and writing down her instructions. As well as an hilariously foul-mouthed bitch with a sense of humour as big and crazy as the Hollywood sign, Sue Mengers is as smart as a whip and a cunning fox to boot. Despite her trademark oversize rose-tinted specs she sees everything with pitiless clarity.
Nevertheless, I’ll Eat You Last opens as success is beginning to crumble and her client list with it. Placed prominently on a plump cushion on the couch is an ivory coloured phone (fine set and costumes Owen Philips, subtle and effective lighting by Ross Graham). She is waiting for her oldest friend and client Barbra to call her and tell her why it was the lawyers who fired her earlier in the day. Meanwhile, Sue chain smokes cigarettes and dope, nibbles chocolates, reminisces and dishes the dirt.
Evidently she does not share the public adoration of Steve McQueen and not only because he destroyed the career of one of her favourites – Ali McGraw (a scene which spans the arc from prussic acidic to sadly touching in a few short minutes). At the same time she is properly impressed to have represented Gore Vidal, sparkles on how she got Faye Dunaway into Chinatown, (instead of “Hanoi Jane”) does not tolerate children except Tatum O’Neal (after she won an Oscar) and casually tosses in other names, such as Candice Bergen, Cybill Shepherd, Peter Bogdanovich, Bob Fosse, Dyan Cannon, Michael Caine, Cher, Brian de Palma – the list is dazzling and almost endless.
In the end, however, it’s all down to a telephone – who will take your calls, or not – and the one that occupies her own couch and does not ring. As well as funny and riveting, Margolyes is poignant and affecting by turns in an account of a life lived uniquely, roughly, sagely and with honesty. Don’t lie to your clients, Sue warns, and don’t tell them the truth either. Make sense of that – as she did – and you can obviously pretty much do anything.
A lavishly entertaining, informative, educational (!) and beautifully performed hour and a half in the company of two of the most fascinating women in the business of show.
