Queen Bette

Few reigned over Hollywood like Bette Davis. With two Oscars and ten nominations, Queen Bette was known for being the biggest bitch in Tinseltown. In Peter Mountford and Jeanette Cronin’s Queen Bette, we are privy to a backstage, access-all-areas depiction of the great dame. Over the course of the hour, prepare to fall in love with one of the most iconic and gifted actors of the 20th century.

Jeanette Cronin’s entrance as Bette Davis is grand. Donning Elizabethan-style petticoats, Cronin interchanges Elizabethan monologues with behind-the-scene tidbits of Davis’s thoughts about playing opposite Errol Flynn. Davis wanted Laurence Olivier. She was also 30 years old at the time and was tasked with playing a 60-year-old.

From there, Cronin employs voice, storytelling and rigour to encapsulate Davis’s remarkable life story. We learn about her close relationship with her mother. And her fractured relationship with her father, who had little faith in her acting abilities. She recounts Davis’s first foray into the limelight and eventual stardom, the turning point of which was Henrik Ibsen’s The Wild Duck.

In the midst of smoke haze, you will become enamoured with the on-screen – and onstage – legend. Queen Bette gets a big yas kween from Milk Bar.

Queen Bette
Gasworks Arts Park – Studio Theatre
Till Saturday, 1 February 2025
midsumma.org.au/whats-on/events/queen-bette