A Thing of Beauty review – Imogen Stubbs electrifies as grilled Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl

2026-02-27 - 14:03

Tabard theatre, London The actor shines as Hitler’s favourite film director, who flirts and finagles her way through a fictional interview with an alcoholic, philandering journalist hiding his own shame Since Peter Morgan’s Frost/Nixon 20 years ago, pieces about celebrated TV interviews have trended – James Graham’s Best Of Enemies, Doug Wright’s Goodnight, Oscar and two TV dramas about Emily Maitlis and the sweat-less then Prince Andrew. A play about Michael Parkinson’s studio bouts with Muhammad Ali is in preparation. Now A Thing Of Beauty by Wendy Oberman and Jonathan Lewis imagines Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler’s propagandist film director (Triumph Of The Will) and rumoured lover, in London in 1972 to talk to the BBC. Or partly imagines: she made a programme with the corporation that year, although the interviewer was the admirable journalist-playwright Keith Dewhurst rather than, as on stage, Harry Adams – an alcoholic philanderer with a grim private shame – who the playwrights presumably invented to allow historical falsifications such as Adams’s spectacular crossing of an ethical boundary. Continue reading...