Review: Audrey Hepburn, Portraits of an Icon, The Wilson, Cheltenham gives you a lovely glimpse into the character of the Cotswolds, whether that is through history, landscape, architecture, local life or a memorable day out.
Read on for the details, from Theatre Reviews, Review and Audrey Hepburn to the reasons this place or story continues to add to the charm and character of the Cotswolds.
12/11/2015
There’s an irony even in the title of this fascinating exhibition of photographs from Audrey Hepburn’s childhood as a precocious ballet dancer in Holland to her late career as a Unicef ambassador in Africa.
Icons are fixed, venerable, and indeed for a long time Hepburn’s appealing, cool elfin-like features became stereotypical images for cosmetics and Lux soap. And when her hair was trimmed for the part of Natasha in War and Peace, American hairdressers were quick to offer “the Natasha cut.”
Yet there was always something elusive, enigmatic behind the light-hearted ebullience, a tension which, as in all great portraits, can be seen in these pictures.
One of her most famous images, seen here unfortunately only in the accompanying merchandise, is from Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Hepburn is unmistakable, peering commandingly into the jeweller’s window, looking every inch the star, but with her face half-obscured behind huge sunglasses.
In other photographs she is seen as multiple receding images, or reflected doubly at a dressing-room table. In another, departing in a taxi, it’s as if she had landed with us only lightly as a butterfly.
She was, in the words of her photographers Mark Shaw, “the most intriguingly childish, adult, feminine tomboys. She’s many women wrapped up in one.”
The actress who struggled against being typecast as a 40-year-old ingénue, yet became almost accidentally a dictator of fashion. Dressed by Givenchy in high necklines to conceal the collarbones of which the spindly dancer was a little self-conscious, she saw the style become the look of chic.
It was perhaps Hepburn’s good fortune to personify the more independent but still rather coy woman of the 1950s, but her good sense to exploit the privileges this brought to earn more serious roles both in film and in her work for Unicef, which she saw as her greatest achievement.
The exhibition, assembled by the National Portrait Gallery, includes advertising, publicity shots and pictures from the Hepburn family private collection in California, and continues with associated events until 31 January.
Rating: ****
Colin Davison
Yet there was always something elusive, enigmatic behind the light-hearted ebullience, a tension which, as in all great portraits, can be seen in these pictures.
One of her most famous images, seen here unfortunately only in the accompanying merchandise, is from Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Hepburn is unmistakable, peering commandingly into the jeweller’s window, looking every inch the star, but with her face half-obscured behind huge sunglasses.
In other photographs she is seen as multiple receding images, or reflected doubly at a dressing-room table. In another, departing in a taxi, it’s as if she had landed with us only lightly as a butterfly.
She was, in the words of her photographers Mark Shaw, “the most intriguingly childish, adult, feminine tomboys. She’s many women wrapped up in one.”
The actress who struggled against being typecast as a 40-year-old ingénue, yet became almost accidentally a dictator of fashion. Dressed by Givenchy in high necklines to conceal the collarbones of which the spindly dancer was a little self-conscious, she saw the style become the look of chic.
It was perhaps Hepburn’s good fortune to personify the more independent but still rather coy woman of the 1950s, but her good sense to exploit the privileges this brought to earn more serious roles both in film and in her work for Unicef, which she saw as her greatest achievement.
The exhibition, assembled by the National Portrait Gallery, includes advertising, publicity shots and pictures from the Hepburn family private collection in California, and continues with associated events until 31 January.
Rating: ****
Colin Davison
