An Awfully Big Adventure

REVIEW
A dingy 1947 Liverpool is the setting for this very British comedy-drama on life within a repertory theatre troupe. Fifteen-year-old orphan Stella (Cates) finds a family and many life lessons when she is hired as a starry-eyed apprentice and part-time actress. The troupe is headed by Meredith Potter (Grant), a maniacally egotistical gay director with a taste for using and abusing the younger male workers. Grant's Meredith is a wonderful creation -- a pale, nervous, obviously vain chain-smoker with looks that suggest a prissy, upper-class Clark Kent. At its best, Adventure is an entertaining glimpse behind the curtain, but the film suffers from a disjointed story line and a menagerie of perpetually pitiful characters.