RICHARD Eyre is a man of the (National) theatre transferred to the silver screen, and for Stage Beauty he goes back to his stage roots for a bawdy, bosomy comic romp that could pass for Shakespeare In Love's more confused cousin.

Meticulous in detail as ever, Eyre recreates the streets of 17th century London for yet another British costume drama (one of those things we do well, like sit-down sports in the Olympics).

In the metropolis of the 1660s, women are not allowed to perform on the theatrical stage, and instead the darling of the capital is Ned Kynaston (Billy Crudup), the doyen of the great Shakespearean female roles at the theatre run by troubled actor-manager Sir Thomas Betterton (Tom Wilkinson).

Charles II (Rupert Everett at his most foppish), kicks Puritanism in the crutch by issuing a Royal decree at the request of his fruity Cockney mistress Nell Gwyn (Zoe Tapper), enabling women to act. What's more, no man should take their roles, and so pretty boy Kynaston finds himself without a future. Deserted by his devotees and by his patron and lover, the Duke of Buckingham (Ben Chaplin), he is, like a silent movie star after The Jazz Singer, redundant.

While he falls on hard times, he can only watch as his covetous dresser, Maria (Claire Danes) earns her place in history as the first woman to tread the boards.

At first there is friction, but they embark on an affair, each as uncertain as the other, doubting their talent, all the more so when greater female performers than Maria take to the stage and her lack of skill leaves her contemplating unemployment too.

Rejected and dejected, they concoct a plan to utilise their frustration and feelings for each other on stage, she playing Desdemona, he at last playing his own sex as Othello.

In the manner of John Madden's fellow backstage comic romance, Shakespeare In Love, Eyre conducts his lively, waspish, cross-dressing drama with brio, celebrating theatre while at the same time pricking the bubble of the theatrical coterie as the once self-loving Kynaston learns to love another. The tone is bittersweet; the humour saucy; the performances of the support players bordering on the luvvie (Richard Griffiths's painted, poisonous, queenly dandy and Edward Fox's old misery, in particular).

This is a thoroughly English piece, never mind that the leads are American. Billy Crudup can no longer be ignored as one of the actors of his generation, here capturing the butterfly on the wheel of misfortune, although Jeffrey Hatcher's script falls frustratingly short of resolving his identity at the finale.

Danes, who had not built on the promise of Baz Luhrmann's 1995 spin on William Shakespeare's Romeo And Juliet, moves up a gear, stretched by the brilliance of Crudup.

Updated: 16:00 Thursday, September 02, 2004