In researching background information for this posting I discovered that 11 out of 12 main stream critics absolutely hated it. Some of them were downright venomous. Plot wise it is rather a straight foreward story. A young Liverpudlian girl stricken by the performance bug takes a position as an unpaid student with a local regional troop. It is more or less the usual cast of back stage characters, the over the hill female star, the gal who drinks too much and is given to hysteria, the just ever so long toothed juvenile and the ambitious underlings willing to trade a toss in the hay for a decent part.
Grant plays against type and gives a marvelous performance as a very arch and very nasty queen.
The whole thing is seen through the eyes of the young girl who naturally has a crush on the director. Enter Mr. Rickman, filling in for a leading man who breaks his leg coming down a flight of stairs upon his entrance in Caesar and Cleopatra. Rickman falls for and seduces our young heroine but takes umbrage at the directors seduction of his young swain not seeing the comparison that can be drawn. It is also possible that he remembers his own seduction many years ago, but that is never made clear. At any rate, the fault found with the film was that it was hard to follow, that it was episodic and at times seemed to jump from scene to scene with no proper introduction nor clue as to what and why it was introduced.