Bob Mondello Review: 'Stage Beauty'

By Bob Mondello

Published October 8, 2004 at 12:00 AM EDT

For most of the 17th century, women were banned from the English stage and key Shakespearean characters such as Juliet and Ophelia had to be played by men. But in 1660, everything changed. NPR's Bob Mondello says the new movie Stage Beauty is about the moment when women were first allowed to act -- and some exceptional female impersonators found their lives turned upside down.

Bob Mondello

Bob Mondello, who jokes that he was a jinx at the beginning of his critical career — hired to write for every small paper that ever folded in Washington, just as it was about to collapse — saw that jinx broken in 1984 when he came to NPR.

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