E2 WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2019 S LATIMES.COM/CALENDAR
TICKETS: $45-$75
FREE PARKING
1 University Dr., Aliso Viejo | performingarts.soka.edu |949.480.4ART
Behzod Abduraimov
“This is a pianist who has it all: silky
delicacy, mighty thunder-power,
rare clarity... All this is combined
with a technical finesse...”
- The Seattle Times
SAT | DEC 7 | 8 PM
There is already great acclaim for this phenomenal young pianist:
in the words of one critic, he’s “a super-virtuoso capable of real,
delicate musicality.” But it’s his personal energy – the combination of
super-charged skill and poetic freshness – that makes him perfectly
suited for this varied program.
CHOPIN 24 Preludes, Op. 28
DEBUSSY Children’s Corner
MUSSORGSKY Pictures at an Exhibition
L
TheWallis.org/Love | 310.746.4000
“LOVE ACTUALLY
LIVEDELIVERS!
Letthissuperbly
mountedmusicalwash
overyouwithwarmth
andjoy”– LA Times
“PITCHPERFECT!”
- Entertainment Weekly
BEGINS
IN2
WEEKS!
CULTURE MONSTER
All the arts, all the time
latimes.com/culturemonster
To advertise here go to http://www.latimes.com/placeadMcKellen, 80, and Mirren, 74,
never had an opportunity to
work together before the
play (“I’m sure if I had been
straight I would have been
standing in line,” McKellen
quips of his costar’s popu-
larity). And it’s only now, in
Bill Condon’s thriller “The
Good Liar,” that the actors
have teamed for a film. “Pe-
ter Hall, the great theater di-
rector, used to say that all
members of the English Ac-
tors Equity are part of the
same company and they
could work well together be-
cause there were shared val-
ues and shared experiences,
even though they’d never
met,” McKellen says, speak-
ing a year later at the Corin-
thia Hotel in London ahead
of the film’s release. “So
when you work with people
you don’t know but you’ve
seen from afar, it’s a bit like
coming home even though
you’ve only just arrived.”
“Doing that play, which is
very much a two-hander and
being in New York at that
time was a very bonding ex-
perience,” Mirren adds.
“Apart from the fact that ob-
viously we come from the
same tradition and we’ve fol-
lowed each other all of our
lives, I do think that shared
experience meant that when
we came back together on
this movie there was a whole
world of understanding.”
“The Good Liar,” ad-
apted from Nicholas Searle’s
2015 novel of the same name,
tells the story of an aging con
man named Roy Courtnay
(McKellen) who conspires to
steal the fortune of a recent
widow, Betty (Mirren).
Everything is not as it seems
in the story, which unfolds
slowly to a surprising cli-
max.
That ending was what
convinced Condon the novel
would make for a good film
after producer Greg Yolen
suggested the director read
the book, which he did in a
single flight. The pair
quickly looked into the
rights, and New Line, who
had already optioned the
novel, brought Condon
onboard. They tapped Jeff-
rey Hatcher, the screen-
writer behind McKellen and
Condon’s last collaboration,
“Mr. Holmes,” to reimagine
the story for the screen.
“From a genre point of
view it’s a wonderful twisty,
turny crime thriller in the
spirit of Patricia Highsmith
or John Le Carre,” Condon
notes. “That combined with
this incisive character study
of a con man and his victim
made it really appealing to
me.”
The director approached
McKellen immediately for
Roy (although Searle ap-
parently thought of Michael
Caine when writing the
character) and was inter-ested in Mirren because he
read the character of Betty
in her voice.
“You’re reading it and
you keep hearing her,” Con-
don says. “And I think when
she read it she said the same
thing. There are parts you
play that are very different
than yourself but this one
felt like very much an exten-
sion of who she is. There’s a
pretty long list of actresses of
a certain age, British ac-
tresses specifically, who
could play that. And then
you focus in on what those
characteristics are about
the character that you need.
And then you realize it’s got
to be Helen.”
For Mirren, the role was a
simple yes, particularly be-
cause she was interested in
working with McKellen and
Condon, who previously col-laborated on “Mr. Holmes”
and Oscar-winning “Gods
and Monsters.”
“Sometimes you read
something and it really
scares you,” Mirren says.
“You think, ‘I don’t know if
I’m right for this.’ And often
you do it for that very reason,
because it’s going to be a
challenge. This one I didn’t
feel like that. I’m not saying
it wasn’t a challenge — it al-
ways is — but I thought, ‘Oh,
yeah, that role plays to my
strengths. I can see that
working.’ You’re not fighting
against who you are natu-
rally. The whole fun of the
movie is finding those differ-
ent levels and stories that
the characters have.”
To say much about the
story would spoil the unex-
pected unfurling of the plot.
While the novel flashes backover several timelines, the
film is told largely in present
day and revealed as a two-
hander, giving both charac-
ters equal weight in the nar-
rative.
For all its twists, it’s an in-
timate movie about human
interaction, one that relies
on its actors’ to pile on layers
of deception that leave the
audience guessing until the
very end. In that way, it’s a
slightly unusual film coming
from a major Hollywood stu-
dio, especially in a year of se-
quels and action-led block-
busters, and it’s also the rare
movie that tells the story of
older characters.
“It’s still surprising that
we got to make this movie,”
Condon reflects. “It was sort
of like, ‘Wow, they’re doing
it!’ It’s a tribute to New Line
and Warner Bros. that theydecided to make a lot of
these grown-up movies.
But, yeah, it’s hard. It’s a
movie with two older leads,
and it’s not about mortal-
ity.”
“Normally in this sort of a
story it would be characters
in their mid-30s or some-
thing,” Mirren says with a
laugh. “The story is abso-
lutely about these charac-
ters and nobody else —
they’re not peripheral in any
way to the central thrust of
this extraordinary plot.”
“Within the scheme of
things they’re very plausible
characters,” McKellen adds.
“They have long histories. I
suppose all one’s life is
playing characters of the ap-
propriate age, but here were
are in our mellow years
playing two people with real
histories.”“THE GOOD LIAR,”adapted from Nicholas Searle’s novel, is about an aging con man who conspires to steal the fortune of a widow.Chia JamesWarner Bros. PicturesActors find a world of understanding
[‘Good Liar,’from E1]