Bette/Cavett

Poor old Bette Davis has had her fair share of impersonators over the years but Grant Smeaton’s production takes imitation to a whole new level in this bizarre note-for-note recreation of her appearance on the Dick Cavett show in 1971. With a staggering performance that uncannily inhabits the theatrical spirit of great dame, he captures Bette’s every twitch, cadence and throwaway line with an unnerving authenticity.

The show is a kind of three dimensional YouTube, bringing aged fuzzy video images to life complete with advertising breaks, obligatory presenter sideburns and bleachy 70s colour schemes. Each section is book-ended with hilarious real adverts from a time when health conscious country clubbers smoked Salem fags, Ayds was a slimming biscuit and Coke taught the world to sing in perfect harmony.

Gordon Munro gives a sparkling performance as the unctuous Cavett, teasing and cajoling his guest to bigger revelations. But it’s Bette who dominates proceedings. Ably assuming the mantle of the best chat show guests she regales us with a storm of home-spun wisdom, diva-esque grumbles and high wire anecdotes. And Smeaton delights in underscoring her fake sincerity and occasional unintended candour as she heartily trashes her former Hollywood employers and changing social structures.

Although it’s an acting tour de force, chat-show recreation can be an unsettling spectator sport. Since it’s a verbatim transcript of real event, the dramatic peaks and troughs sometimes fall in the wrong places and the embarrassing spaces that mark real conversations can make a theatre audience slightly uneasy. But the actors brazen it out, forcing us to live through the show as it actually happened – with some of the crowd getting so engrossed they forget they're watching a play and started answering Bette back.

Bette/Cavett is an exhilarating and enjoyable experience  but it doesn’t reveal so much about Miss Davis: she’s plainly hamming it up for the cameras. The performances are terrific, however, and if this real-life recreation lark is the birth of a new genre maybe we’ll soon see Billy Connolly on Parky or Grace Jones whacking Russell Harty again.