QUEEN BETTE
Created by Peter Mountford and Jeanette Cronin.
Premiered Old 505 Theatre, Sydney, 2015.
Return Seasons, Old 505, 2016, 2019 & Hunter Valley Summer Theatre 2016.
Reviews 2015
In Jeanette Cronin’s company, the show’s 60 minutes go by in a flash. The performer’s work is more exciting and engaging than anyone can hope for in a role this iconic, and like Queen Bette Davis herself, Cronin’s ability to have us fall in love simultaneously with both actor and character, is sublime. We feel as though suspended in time, watching her genius in action, with all its technical proficiencies, emotional astuteness and physical splendour. Her mastery turns the audience into putty in her hands, captivated and gleeful at every twist and turn she introduces to the theatrical experience that we are subject to.
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Women like Davis, and Cronin, help us envision what success looks like, and their magnificence is a reminder that we too, can be brighter and better. We too can be sovereign.
Suzygoessee.
Cronin’s performance is central to the show’s success and not because of the fortuitous and uncanny resemblance (at first glance I have to admit thinking the image above was an archive photo from a Bette Davis shoot of long ago). She delivers a performance that grabs the heart as the young, vulnerable girl whose mother is the mainstay – not monster – of a rather sad childhood; and when she demonstrates the charisma and rocket-fuelled power of the Hollywood star in her prime, she is the real royal deal.
Diana Simmonds, Stage Noise.
Jeanette Cronin as the one-woman behind this one-woman show brings the audience an honest adaptation of the glittering star. Cronin fleshes out the vulnerability and vitriol, the playfulness and the ferocity that so marked Bette Davis’ personality. It is no easy character to play but Cronin gets it right. Queen Bette is both naïve and articulate, artificial yet deliberate.
Further, Cronin’s voice-work is fantastic. She neatly captures Bette’s Boston-Anglo accent of the time with its rounded and aspirated “h’s” (aitches).
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What brings home Cronin’s performance however is the likeness she bears to Bette Davis beyond her physical appearance. Cronin has often played forward-thinking roles and she is no stranger to risk. Indeed, she was in the original play-reading of the controversial play The Boys in 1988, a work she revisited at the Griffin theatre in 2012. Bette Davis was an actress similarly known for her willingness to take on ‘unconventional’ female roles, hard-nosed and unlikeable characters, at a time when such a thing could spell career-suicide. In Bette Davis, Cronin seems to have found a kindred spirit and this gives her characterisation a believability a different actress may have lacked.
Euan Brown, aussietheatre.
Reviews 2019
Jeanette Cronin, once again embraces the star quality of the ferocious and driven Bette Davis. It is a tour-de-force of intelligence and energy supported by an uncanny resemblance to the actual woman that can startle one into a kind of awe - "You" it says, "are in the presence of Miss Bette Davis, so, don't look away or I'll devour you!" The Playwriting insists the actor to avoid the typical 'campery' of verbal quotes and caricatured physicalities that might tempt a less interesting actor and, instead, focuses on the core of this artist and the purity of her actions to create art. This is Bette Davis the actor not the commodity. This Bette Davis is not the actor/priestess at the altar of Thespis but is, rather, the sacrifice on the altar. She gives her all, professionally and personally, to bring a story to an audience and demands that all of her fellow collaborators who come into her sphere of creativity to do so too. Ms Cronin fearless demands it of you.
Kevin Jackson’d Theatre Diary.
Jeanette Cronin has performed this piece on and off since 2015 and she is in complete control of the material (drawn from Davis’ autobiography and various published interviews), the space and the audience. It’s the kind of masterclass Wyngarde! could learn a lot from.
Jason Blake Audrey Journal 2019
Cronin took us on a whirlwind tour of what really mattered to Bette Davis. Acting. The men and lovers in her life are sidelined to the love she had for her craft, her mother and sister. How gloriously refreshing to see a female character celebrating her relationships with female members of her family, rather than being at war with them. Cronin gives a Bette who drew strength from women and fought for the right to play central characters of substance instead of being playthings or sidekicks for men.
Kate Stratford Theatre Now 2019
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Reviews 2020
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Queen Bette is a dark, driving glimpse at one of greatest movie actresses, Bette Davis. Directed in splendid, visceral fashion by Peter Mountford, Jeanette Cronin is a marvel as Davis in this compelling solo show.
There’s a period of aural adjustment at the beginning of the play when Jeanette first bursts on stage in full Davis voice and our ears must adjust to her accent. She moves around a dressing room of sorts, apparently taking some respite from playing Queen Elizabeth I.
It was a role that she played more than once and while Jeanette traces her path around the space, the full regalia sits mounted back in one corner. In one of a multitude of deft creative touches, the costume is never referred to. Its totem-like presence is enough to reinforce certain qualities of Davis – resolute, stubborn, etc – that Jeanette conveys wonderfully during the piece.
There’s no soundscape as such. Occasional, brief steps into cinematic vignettes are scored by traditional orchestral movie swells, otherwise there’s silence. Often the sound levels in these moments would unfortunately drown Jeanette out, but they were nicely laid out. Other support in design came from Harrie Hogan with a judicious use of lighting that shifted from practical to stylised and back again in a lovely, organic way throughout.
A fascinating quality was despite the 75-minute running time, Jeanette’s performance had such a fleeting feel. There was a palpable sense of transience as she told her story of an untraditional star that ultimately burned bright for decades before her eventual departure. While there was certainly armour there, there was also heart, and Jeanette reveals both in this engaging look at “The First Lady of Film.”
David Collins, Australian Pride Network.
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The biggest bitch in Hollywood is back. Performed as part of the Midsumma Festival, Queen Bette delves into the life of film legend Bette Davis. Having had its initial development in 2014, its creators, director Peter Mountford and performer Jeanette Cronin, have refined this into a spellbinding production that gives a stirring voice to a woman that Hollywood often wished would just stay quiet and do her job.
Cronin may bare an uncanny resemblance to the movie icon, but her mannerisms and speech add to the authenticity of her portrayal that highlights Davis' fiery personality. This is further heightened when you consider that most of the dialogue was originally spoken or written by Davis, which is based on much research by its creators. In this captivating performance you can easily find yourself believing that Davis is standing right in front of you, because apart from capturing Bette Davis' eyes, Cronin also finds a way to capture her spirit and soul.
Mountford's direction is surprising and engaging with changes in style and pace throughout the show, while retaining a contemplative and solemn tone as Bette brings up memories of her childhood, her relationships and career. Her green room is fitted with some furniture, a clothed mannequin, and a dresser covered with various items of symbolism and meaning including a wooden toy duck, piles of scripts, photographs and an Oscar. At times, Bette sits at the dresser, her back to the audience, but her reflection in the mirror keeps her visible to us, illustrative of her vulnerability but determination in staring anyone down.
Queen Bette is a fitting tribute to this screen star who fought hard to ensure she had a say in how she was perceived and what turn her life and career took. Despite attempts to keep her silent and docile, Davis made sure her voice could not, and would not, be ignored. Queen Bette honours her by making sure her voice is not only heard, but not forgotten.
Myron My, My Melbourne.
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Now, in an astonishing performance that captures Bette Davis as both a trail blazer and an astoundingly intelligent human being, Jeanette Cronin brings the woman to life after the success of manifesting Bette in the Ensemble theatres Dark Voyager in 2014. Not only does Cronin look remarkably like Bette Davis but she embodies her to the extent that a deeply complicated version of the screen goddess emerges, truly making the one hour show seem like an intimate tete-a-tete with the woman usually kept at such a profound distance by the screens frame, and time itself. The old 505 Theatre has seen fit to locate this monologue at Gay Mardi Gras time, which is a great idea, but to be honest, the actress needs this sort of impassioned revival outside of those boundaries as well. Cronin offers us a Bette Davis that is a reflection of herself, a woman incapable of being restrained, as in love with the female dark side as she was bored with the feminine mystique. She performs alone on the stage, but the room is decorated with the paraphernalia of image, including costumes, carefully positioned lighting and a large dressing table and mirror that reflects the audience back against the themselves. As Cronin becomes Bette in Queen Bette, she tells us about a life when a woman remarkably lived exactly as she wanted.
Peter Mountford is a director with a strong eye for movement. Cleverly, much of the way Bette Davis’ determination is captured by Cronin is the result of her physicality, strides, deft pauses, attempts to commandeer the audience with the sharp turn and that always existent commanding presence. We see Bette Davis as strong-willed and in forward motion, not running from something, or haunted by fear. Mountford is aware of the accusations against her, and he includes them as misinterpretations; where we imaged there to be anger, we see a cheerful refusal to comply, where we imagine her to indifferent we see a passion interpreted through objects. Mountford and Cronin’s Queen Bette is not cold, distanced or bitter. She is aggressively seeking, as though her nerve endings smoulder, the intelligent spark in her eye fueling her bodies actions. Cronin uses the entire stage, striding from here to there, as enormously comfortable with the intimacy of theatre as she is with the movement of the camera. Bette Davis was always about eyes. Those of the beholder, those of the camera, those of the audience and of course, her own. Mountford and Cronin create a Davis who never stoops to court the watcher, but who commands the perpetual gaze nonetheless.
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The 2015 Mardi Gras season has produced some wonderful works that experiment with ideas that develop beyond the heteronormative response to ‘gay-ness’ and Queen Bette is another contribution to more facets of what it means to be GLBT in a predominately hetro-enfored society. Bette Davis has been appropriated as a gay icon, and with a performance like Queen Bette it is easy to understand why she is so loved by the outsider. Whether you go to get closer to this important and interesting female, or to see Cronin’s astonishing performance and manifestation, just make sure you go. This is a night you won’t forget in a hurry.
Lisa Thatcher.
QUEEN BETTE is a one hour, one woman show devised by Peter Mountford and Jeanette Cronin focusing on the career of one of the great actors and cult figures of the American cinema. What compounds the delight, the pleasure of this performance, is the dignified respect that both the devisors have given to this woman as artist. None of the usual, expected 'camperies' of the cult legend, vocal and physical mannerisms armed with the (in)famous quotations from her films and life, are indulged (there are enough trace triggers to memory to keep the fans happy, though) and instead, we receive an enlightening insight into the artistic/mechanisms' of the artist at work, and exemplars of the sacrifices of the obsessive drive of any true and successful 'genius'. There have been, therefore, necessarily, exclusions of the life and legend - so QUEEN BETTE, is a selective impressionistic take, that re- enforces the artist temperament of Ms Davis over some of the personal dilemmas of her 'dramatic' force of life journey.
So, the text is beautifully constructed in its very focused interests (I understand 90% of it is directly the 'voice' of Bette Davis, mined from research of books (e.g. THE LONELY LIFE, by Bette Davis - 1962) and interviews!). Add, the deeply committed and impeccably observed artistry of Ms Cronin, who possesses, more often than not, an uncanny 'look' of the original actor, and an amazing transportive and satisfying hour can be had.
Kevin Jackson’s Theatre Diary.
Reviews 2016
Fasten your seat belts; you’re in for a helluva ride, as Jeanette Cronin reprises her role as Bette Davis in Queen Bette, a return season of last year’s smash hit sell out celebration of one of Hollywood’s enduring icons. Exploding onto the stage in a rage full of expletive and hell hath no ferocity, Cronin channels Davis with a dichotomy of personal diatribe and dialogue from the movie, Elizabeth and Essex.
Cronin is a theatre magician creating an acting alchemy. From the opening scene, her physiological resemblance to Bette Davis is striking, but as the narrative evolves, the resemblance ratchets to remarkable, exceeding mere impression, exalting in a reincarnation. This is an enchantment by talent and technique, something Bette Davis toiled for, and Cronin has crafted. Bette Davis may have found her Australian co-star, Errol Flynn, flawed, but would certainly be floored by Jeanette Cronin’s towering and triumphant tribute. Spooky footnote: Bette Davis character in the 1931 Universal motion picture, Waterloo Bridge, is named Janet Cronin.
Richard Cotter Australian Stage.
Jeanette Cronin as Bette Davis.
All photos by Richard Hedger.
