WORTH A LOOK?: ****
RUN TIME: 1 hour 40 minutes
WHEN?: released 28/9/18 (UK)
It’s very early days to be talking about the 2019 Oscars but the bookmakers have Glenn Close in the runner-up slot for this film behind Lady Gaga in the stellar A Star Is Born.
- Read on for reasons including where to see Close on stage in New York now
Close has more Oscar nominations (6, currently) than any other living actor. We’ve reviewed her on this site in Sunset Boulevard and Pryce is currently appearing in The Height Of The Storm with Dame Eileen Atkins in the West End.
Awards are very much at the heart of The Wife and the story is about the titular Joan Archer who is the power behind the throne of her Nobel Prize-winning husband Pryce as a potential biographer (an impish Christian Slater) probes a theory that she may be even more than that.
It is to reviewers’ credit that the resolution of this particular conundrum is far knottier than has been hinted at. In fact it is nowhere near as simple as the about-to-open A Very, Very, Very Dark Matter but there is a similarity.
We saw Pryce interviewed on The Marr Show recently saying no American actor would play the narcissist he conjures up but, inevitably, the joy of The Wife is that nothing here is quite so black and white.
Close has never been better and it is a part that is a masterclass in seething rage that can simmer no longer and must boil over. Will she beat Gaga to the Oscar? It’ll be close – if not Close.
Next week we see Glenn Close as Joan of Arc’s mother in Mother of the Maid in New York as monstagigz goes international. Check out this site for our review ahead of a potential West End transfer.
monstagigz 
4 comments