MUMBAI: Academy Award-winning actor Kevin Spacey appeared as a star guest in a self-produced stage play during the SIHH Watch Fair in Geneva recently. The short film of this performance will have its online world premiere on 16 May 2007.
The performance was part of Luxury Swiss watch manufacturer, IWC Schaffhausen’s launch of its Da Vinci range.
Oscar winner Cate Blanchett and actors Jean Reno and Matthew Modine headed the cohort of actors on the red carpet, flanked by Asian stars Sanada Hiroyuki and Chang Cheng while Egyptian super star Hany Salama represented the Middle East at the event. Singer Ronan Keating and world-class foot-baller Zinédine Zidane posed before the photographers, and Laureus sporting legends like Boris Becker and Alberto Tomba graced the “Serata die Leonardo” with their presence.
The stage play, Leo and Lisa, produced especially for IWC by Oscar winner Kevin Spacey was the high point of the evening. In spite of his current guest appearance on Broadway in Eugene O’Neill’s A Moon for the Misbegotten, Spacey also took it upon himself to play the leading role in this first performance.
As a dominant, boorish and autocratic inquisitor, he addressed the question of Mona Lisa’s smile. Thandie Newton, already well known from Mission: Impossible 2 was outstanding in the leading female role of Lisa. Elliot Cowan, who played the role of Leo, appeared in Oliver Stone’s historical epic, Alexander. The play ran for 15 minutes, and the guests were invited into an amphitheatre built especially for this event, where Leo and Lisa had its premiere.
Spacey’s theatre performance was recorded by a film crew. To make this world premiere accessible to a wide public, the production will go online as a short film on the IWC Web site on 16 May 2007. An additional making-of clip shows not only clips from the rehearsals and a look behind the scenes, but also a good-humoured Kevin Spacey, who is truly in his element on the stage. Spacey, who caused a stir as a consummate character actor in cinema classics such as Seven, The Usual Suspects,
L.A. Confidential and American Beauty, took over in 2003 as Artistic Director of the Old Vic, one of the oldest theatres in London.
