Double Feature is a fascinating play about the relationships between two pairs of actors and directors: Vincent Price vs Michael Reeves and Alfred Hitchcock vs Tippi Hedren. The two stories about power, resistance and amity informing the common aim of making a film are skilfuly and movingly interwoven by writer John Logan.
I went to see the play during its run at the Hampstead Theatre, London.
I didn’t just go because I love theatre.
I had to go. Why?
Because I was the last girlfriend of the brilliant and tragic Michael Reeves, who famously directed the now-cult film Witchfinder General and died of an overdose of cross-prescribed sleeping pills and antidepressants in 1969, aged 25.
In John Logan’s play, Michael is portrayed as more feisty, more aggressive and insistent, louder and more physically energetic than he was. That Michael is not quite the Michael I knew towards the very end of his life. ‘My’ Michael was mild, pensive, thoughtful, low-key, insightful, albeit, yes, driven by a passion for filmmaking and portraying the truth in films. He was also mortally depressed, partly because of the battles he had had with the British Board of Film Censors about what they saw as excessive violence in his films.
Rowan Polonski, who plays Michael beautifully, had read my memoir, 
At Last Michael Reeves, before auditioning for the part. I included ‘At Last’ in the title because the memoir chronicled the last weeks of Michael’s life and laid to rest the long-circulating rumours that Michael had committed suicide.
No. It wasn’t suicide. The psychiatrists and doctors killed him.
Catch Double Feature before the run ends on 16th March, and relish the excellent performances not only of Polonski but also of Ian McNeice as Hitchcock, Joanna Vanderham as Tippi Hedren and Jonathan Hyde as Vincent Price.
Photo: in the documentary The Magnificent Obsession of Michael Reeves.
