A good night for a fine performance

Television star Sean Hayes is a revelation on stage, Rosamund Pike should be garlanded for her role as a judge who finds her son in the dock and the whole company of Brigadoon takes the laurels

- Michael Billington

YOU sometimes leave a theatre talking about a performance, rather than a play. That happened to me twice this month: the first time at Doug Wright’s Good Night, Oscar, which has arrived at the Barbican Theatre from New York, US, and which boasts a brilliant performance from Sean Hayes. I confess I knew nothing beforehand of Mr Hayes, who I gather is famous for a television sitcom, Will & Grace, but he here imprints himself indelibly on the imagination.

He plays Oscar Levant, whom I do remember as a fine musician and lugubrious presence in numerous American movies. He was also no stranger to psychiatric institutions and the point of Mr Wright’s play is that he has escaped from one such for a single night in 1958 to appear as a guest on The Tonight Show hosted by Jack Paar. This is the source of many of his wry remarks in the green room such as: 'She's a cunning woman, my wife, she drove me crazy and then had me committed.' His appearance on television is also a calculated risk, as he says: 'I'm controversial. My friends either dislike me or hate me.' Once in front of the cameras, he comes up with a barrage of one-liners, such as a comment on the much-married Elizabeth Taylor: 'Poor Liz, always a bride, never a bridesmaid.'

The great virtue of Mr Hayes's performance is that he suggests Levant’s humour is a defence against a profound melancholy. He evokes our compassion for a man whose mental fragility is indicated by physical compulsions, such as symmetrically rearranging a set of coffee cups, and, when he finally gives us a rousing performance of Rhapsody in Blue, he leaves us stunned by his own, and Oscar's, pianistic virtuosity.