Period trappings are out even if the implicit social landscape of the original remains. There’s a three-sided, light mud-coloured sparse interior, which at times rises to reveal the functional backstage area, daubed in silver paint and adorned with the odd portrait of Anderson’s cool, composed Margo.
The script faithfully follows and fillets the original and at the start, there’s even a mock-homage as arch critic Addison DeWitt (Stanley Townsend, good but nothing like as imposing as George Sanders) wanders in the wings trailed by a hand-held camera operator, introducing us to the characters – their faces relayed onto a big screen aloft.
There are a few moments of memorable video-trickery: we watch Anderson’s face rapidly, terrifyingly age as she stares into her dressing-room mirror and at another point James, sitting in the same spot, watches as her face morphs into that of her quarry. Aside from that, the intermittent presence of video footage, much it taken inside grotty shipping-containers, adds little – unless you count the sight of a drunken Margo vomiting into a toilet as a plus.