Review: Tilda Swinton in Man to Man, Royal Court

Video transcript: Did Tilda Swinton live up to expectations in Man to Man at the Royal Court Theatre? I confess that she was on my bucket list of screen actors that I would love to see on stage, and I never thought that she actually would, so of course I was going to buy tickets And it’s a very expansive play. It’s a solo performance, playing lots of different roles. But it’s also expansive in that it follows a woman’s life from 1930s Germany through to the 1980s. There’s a lot of history, a lot of references in there, which I really enjoyed. Tilda Swinton is Ella, a wife whose husband dies, and to survive economically, she dresses up in her husband Max’s clothes and poses as him to take over his job. There follows a life of dual identity, as she stays as Max, posing as a man when it’s more economically viable and safer to do so, but also reverting back to being a woman when that is more beneficial. So there’s a theme there about identity and the roles of men and women in society. And…