Movie Review: Flare Path

Sienna Miller. Photo / Getty Images

Sienna Miller's character in Trevor Nunn's production of Terence Rattigan's Flare Path, the wartime drama which opened last week in London's West End, exudes anxiety beneath a stiff upper lip.

Nerves no doubt affected the actress herself, who was panned the last time she trod the London stage.

Several rave reviews later, Miller can cast those worries aside.

In 2005's As You Like It, Miller was derided for her wooden turn as Cecilia. This week she was praised for being "heart-tugging" as Flare Path's Patricia Graham.

So how has Miller risen above the much-publicised woes of her personal life to seize the day?

The key, it seems, is the team surrounding her. According to Flare Path casting director Maggie Lunn, she and Nunn approached Miller after seeing her on Broadway last year in After Miss Julie, Patrick Marber's reworking of Strindberg's Miss Julie, even though this performance was also panned - Ben Brantley of the New York Times said she acted like "a novice at the piano".

"Trevor and I have come across Sienna many times in many projects," said Lunn, who said Miller had been looking for a return to the stage. "The happy actors mix stage and screen."

While Miller auditioned for her part "early on", said Lunn, Sheridan Smith, the Olivier-award-winning actress who plays Doris in Flare Path, did not audition at all, and was approached by Nunn directly.

"Sienna has a great working relationship with the rest of the cast; there is great chemistry on stage," continued Lunn.

Miller is in the West End before starting work on romantic comedy New Year's Eve alongside Robert De Niro and Ashton Kutcher.

Her fame, and the profile of such films, will no doubt do no harm to Flare Path's box office takings.

The Evening Standard's review praised Miller's portrayal of a former starlet torn between her husband and lover as providing "the right mixture of glacial poise and agonised tension".

The Times' Libby Purves offered: "This marks [Miller's] acceptance as a grown-up stage actress, expressing truthful feeling beyond the glamorous image."

Other critics suggest Miller made the most of Nunn's direction. "Trevor is a very good director and he coaxed a very subtle performance out of a role that could easily have descended into melodrama," said the Independent's theatre critic, Paul Taylor.

- INDEPENDENT