Hyde Park Pick: The Christophers

With The Christophers, Stephen Soderbergh again reminds us that the work of an indie director can be lots of fun.

It's a long time since we were first introduced to Soderbergh via his directorial breakthrough, famed indie drama Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989). Since then, he's racked up roughly 38 feature credits as director, a host of TV work, and over 50 producer credits.

His projects dip between genres more and more, but they're consistently stylish, slick and you can't help but feel like everyone involved is there because they want to work with him, and The Christophers is no different.

The story revolves around Julian Sklar, a mainstay of the London art scene since his starry breakout in the creative explosion of the 1960s. Over time, Sklar has drifted into a cluttered, self-imposed seclusion.

That curmudgeonly isolation is broken when his two estranged children engage Lori, a young painter and sometime-forger, to pose as a prospective assistant and gain access to a fabled series of unfinished canvases Julian has buried deep in his home studio.

Whilst The Christophers features small comic turns from James Corden and Ruth Jones as Julian’s scheming offspring, really this is a two-hander with Ian McKellen and Michaela Coel shining in the two leads. Both are magnificent, though McKellen in particular feels like he slips almost too easily into his character. Cruel, brilliant, charismatic, lonely…it’s Gandalf’s darker twin, and it’s a thrill to watch, balanced perfectly against Michaela Coel’s restrained performance of a damaged character, now protecting herself and prowling for revenge in the same breath.

It’s possible to imagine this whole piece delivered on a single stage space, drifting a little closer to theatre than cinema. That’s the pleasure of it, though, two performers delivering their craft for one another and for us. And having a great time doing so. 

The Christophers is showing at HPPH from Fri 15 May. You can book tickets here.