"Stage Beauty" succeeds beautifully in what any good period piece does, whether set 300 years ago or 300 years from now. It takes us into that setting, finds evocative characters, and has them bring up plot matters that resonate. With us, that is ... not necessarily with those actually living in the time depicted.<br /><br />I say this because the central element of the story has been described as unbelievable or unconvincing by some critics. Ned Kynaston (Billy Crudup), at the end of his run in playing female parts, is pulled from personal and professional despair through the insight and love of Maria (Claire Danes), his dresser and successor -- and they create a triumph out of this by bringing some real emotion to the Restoration stage.<br /><br />This has been decried as bringing Method acting to the 17th Century. It's nothing of the kind. Innovation is made during a fertile, provocative period of history. It did take 250 years to get away from excess artifice and gesture on stage. Yet "Stage Beauty" makes you believe that these characters could have accomplished it in the 1660s.<br /><br />If you can live with that, showing a success on stage that we can believe, even if it couldn't "actually have happened" ... then you'll enjoy this story. I was riveted by the way Ned and Maria turn their mutual fortunes around. So was Rupert Everett's wryly spoken Charles II, and so, perhaps, will you.<br /><br />The story centers on Ned's withering and growth in the face of adversity, and Crudup shows a huge range of emotions in carrying out this character's experiences. Complacency, haughtiness, sardonic amusement, appalled shock, tenderness -- but most of all, a crushing verdict on his own abilities, delivered before Charles and his mistress in a setting that only adds to his humiliation. I was taken entirely out of that moment in how I felt for him, almost an out-of-body experience.<br /><br />Maria is the mainspring to Ned's watch face, and Danes shows her own range and depth of feeling. She takes the winds of celebrity, itself something new for that time, and runs with them. Though she's not past being bewildered by them, especially when her portrait is being painted.<br /><br />Her suffering in the wings of several theaters -- down to Ned being abased before drunks -- shows many depths of love, for acting as such, for brilliance of technique, for Ned himself.<br /><br />She almost never talks directly of love. (Hugh Bonneville's perceptive Samuel Pepys helps bring it out at one crucial turning point.) She shows her love to Ned, to all levels of him, without once actually saying so.<br /><br />The two are left seemingly adrift at the end, with her final question and his response. Yet their regard for each other transcends everything that is thrown at them -- from his raging self-doubt, to the royal court's machinations and violence, to her being obsessed with acting technique at the expense of creating passion and fire.<br /><br />This is a story of words transcending gestures and artifice. The words win out, whether in backstage maneuvering, unexpected honesty (even from the King's mistress!), or gauging what can be done with a character. It's a brave new world of being direct, getting past evasions and imitations of emotions.<br /><br />Danes and Crudup inhabit their characters. They're simply English, no question -- the accents are perfect. The Restoration physical settings are superb -- dark enough for post-exile, pre-Fire London, entirely believable for courts, stages, and back-stages. The score is evocative, with twangs of Scots influence.<br /><br />Every element immerses us in this world, even with the acting paradigm shift noted above. One can believe in these characters and their difficulties, and it ultimately comes to matter little that this is the 1660s. It's a human triumph which is timeless.<br /><br />Not every question of life is answered, for Ned and Maria, but you know that they're embarking toward a New World of finding out about themselves -- more metaphorical than the journey undertaken at the end of "Shakespeare in Love," but far more believable.<br /><br />Danes and Crudup deserve Oscar nominations, and I doubt they'll be denied. See for yourself, and be sure you do so in widescreen.