She isn't an arrogant star, airily confident of getting away with any old junk.
So what is Vanessa Redgrave doing in "When She Danced", an irksome piece about Isadora Duncan?
Its shortcomings were exposed on the fringe three years ago, but it is now in the West End, spreadeagled on the stage of the Globe - and the greatest actress alive is gracing it.
Two possible reasons. One, Vanessa's empathy with Isadora, a free-spirited Champagne communist. Two, her bafflingly high regard for author Martin Sherman.
Alas, the dancer's 'genius' cannot be demonstrated and Sherman can put her across only as a tiresome eccentric with little more in her head than might be found in an old oil-drum.
Most of the posing, arty characters on hand are Pseuds' Corner material. They are sent up rotten, but somehow I think Sherman means their vacuous chatter to be taken seriously.
It's Paris, 1923, and Isadora is living in seedy grandeur with her young husband, the Russian revolutionary poet Sergey Esenin who, when not making love to her or sulking because he isn't, is swinging on the chandelier or threatening to hang himself from it.
They are seriously poor (selling furnishings to buy Champagne) and Isadora's endeavours to fund a dance school are getting nowhere. In these dolorous circumstances, Vanessa does her unearthly best and the personable Oleg Menshikov throws himself valiantly into the personality of Sergey, which is roughly that of an orangutan.
A drab but admiring Russian woman who is employed as their interpreter is herself superbly interpreted by Frances de la Tour and the subsidiary personnel Includes a French housekeeper, a Greek pianist, a Swedish dancer and an Italian filing clerk whom Isadora has mistaken for a diplomat.
There are actually two interpreters, the Greek pianist being a bit of a linguist, and much of the dialogue is rendered twice, thus doubling its tediousness.
Also helping the play to seem longer than it is are protracted pauses which Sherman may think of as pregnant.
For me, I'm afraid they were phantom pregnancies.

Submitted by Jane Grey