Directors: Chloe Claudel & Mitchell Polonsky
Creative Producer: Kerrigan Quenemoen
New York’s theatre darling and sometimes London-based company, the curiously named ‘The Goat Exchange’ has opened Dublin’s Theatre Festival 2026 with an entertaining homage to Bette Davis and her Academy Award-winning film, All About Eve, at The Gaiety Theatre.
The production is inspired by a 1951 episode of America’s Lux Radio Theatre’s anthology series which featured some of the stars of the 20th Century Fox film reprising their famous roles. The story of All About Eve, which was written and
directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, was itself based on a 1946 short story by Mary Orr in Cosmopolitan magazine about the real-life impact on a successful actress of a deceitful and devious fan.
Paul Lazar as Radio Host, William Keighley extends “greetings from Hollywood”. He introduces Bette Davis, Anne Baxter, Gary Merrill and guest actor Reginald Gardiner who play actress Margo Channing, malignant fan Eve Harrington/Gertrude Slescynski, Margo’s boyfriend/husband, and finally, “malicious” critic Addison DeWitt. The Lever Brothers Company sponsored the long-running show and so, before the overture begins, Keighley makes sure to squeeze in the tagline that “Lux Flakes are a must for all discriminating women”.
The ensemble are seated at a table at the prestigious Sarah Siddons Award show where Eve Harrington is being honoured for “distinguished achievement” in theatre. Producer Max Fabian, director Lloyd Richards and his wife Karen sit together with Margo and Bill.
In the first of many innovative departures from the conventional format of the original film and radio recording of the play, the house lights come up in the auditorium and a crew member interrupts proceedings with an announcement –
Chloe Claudel is unable to play the part of Eve in today’s performance and her understudy will step in. Intriguingly, Chloe Claudel (not a typo) who has been playing a stagehand thus far, assumes the role of Eve. The lights dim and progress resumes.
What is eerily prescient about this aesthetic disruption is that on August 21, 2026, in a joint statement, The Goat Exchange and Dublin Theatre Festival advised that Ruth Negga was stepping back from Radio Bette’s September run. Negga’s part in the title role has been taken by Marcus Amaglo, presumably her understudy. Or perhaps this theatrical conceit is a recently devised and added piece of subversive self-satire. While Negga is thanked for her extraordinary work on the show and it is hoped that all is well with the actress, it is undeniable that her departure will have engendered panic for directors Claudel and Mitchell Polonsky, and a scramble for adjustments, technical and otherwise, by the production team.
Claudel is simply superb as the seductive and manipulative fan, transforming from a non-descript stalker in a “mousy trench coat and funny hat” to the insidious, ambitious and diabolical ‘ingenue’, doing her utmost to supplant her supposed idol. Her monologue wherein Eve paints a pitiable picture of her past is masterful and is, in my humble view, superior to the original. It would have been momentous, I’m sure, to watch the exceptional Negga and extremely talented Claudel as Davis/Channing and Baxter/(Slescynski) Harrington engage in the psychological warfare between their characters that All ABout Eve is famous for.
Amaglo, however, makes an excellent fist of things, especially given the pressure and stress she must have felt, taking on the mantle of a leading role at the eleventh hour. Michael Cerveris, Roberta Colindrez, Vann Dukes, Adam Silver and Kayta Thomas are equally impressive in their myriad array of supporting roles.
Polonsky mixes music from the original soundtrack of the film such as Liszt’s Liebestraum and Arlen’s Stormy Weather with modern classics like Earth, Wind and Fire’s Boogie Wonderland and Bassey’s The Greatest Performance of my Life. Marilyn Monroe, who portrays the starlet, Miss Casswell in the film is depicted as a ventriloquist’s doll. A scene where the ensemble walk through the house to perform a scene from Davis’ historical 1939 film The Private Lives of
Elizabeth and Essex “in one” on the apron of the stage is hilarious. The line “All the fools come from Ireland but only a greater fool would go there” has us laughing at ourselves. Similarly executed, the car breakdown scene with Channing and the Richards, has our audience in stitches.
To someone who has seen the film All about Eve and who has checked out the 1951 Lux Radio Theatre broadcast (me), Radio Bette comes across as a contemporary, deconstructed and anachronistically fun revision of a classic. To someone who is familiar with neither (my companion), the play, which has actors playing actors who play actors based on a short-story about actors, comes across as being unnecessarily convoluted and an exercise in mental gymnastics. If you are thinking of going to see this play, and I recommend that you do, you might consider watching or re-watching the inimitable All About Eve beforehand.
Their recent crisis aside, this play looks like it should have been a lot of fun for The Goat Exchange to create and collaborate upon. The subject matter is a perfect fit for the theatre company and their philosophy. Not least because of script lines such as those in Bill’s remonstration to Eve – “Want to know what the theatre is? A flea circus. Also opera. Also rodeos, carnivals, ballet, Indian tribal dances, Punch and Judy, a one-man band – all theatre. Wherever there’s magic and make-believe and an audience – there’s theatre”. “ The theatre’s for everybody – you included, but not exclusively.” “It may not be your theatre, but it’s the theatre of somebody, somewhere.”
Reviewed: 27th Sept 2026.
