Elizabeth Taylor is still on the telephone. During Kayla Boye’s performance of the Hollywood superstar Call Me Elizabeth: From Burton to Humanitarian, the telephone becomes more than a prop.
It is a lifeline to a vanished world, connecting Taylor with old friends, Hollywood royalty, and powerful figures, including Ronald Reagan, as she attempts to use her extraordinary influence to confront the AIDS crisis. This is the global premiere of the second part of Boye’s performance, following From Lassie to Cleopatra, which I reviewed at the Fringe in 2023. The emphasis has now shifted from the making of the Hollywood star to the woman who found another purpose for her fame.
The stage is intimate. A drinks table, some plants and a glass are enough to create the feeling of Taylor’s private world. At the beginning she pours San Pellegrino rather than champagne, a small but telling indication of a woman who has left her drinking days behind, at least for the moment. Boye is striking. Her posture is poised, the glamour unmistakable, the violet eyes shining out beneath the lights. There is grey in the hair now, but Boye, as Taylor knows, exactly how to command a room.
Then there is the voice; Boye has captured Taylor’s distinctive cadence and husky warmth with remarkable precision. The physical resemblance is important, but the voice completes the transformation. The audience is quickly in the palm of her bejewelled hand.
The telephone keeps ringing, and Rock Hudson is among those who feature in these conversations, and there is a particular tenderness in Taylor’s recollections of him; the end of his life is inseparable from the tragedy of AIDS. Taylor is determined to get people involved. She calls, persuades and cajoles, attempting to make others understand the scale of the crisis.
Some decline, others eventually come on board. There are conversations with Michael Jackson and Nancy Reagan, while Ronald Reagan becomes the much more intimate-sounding “Ronnie”. It gives us a glimpse of a woman who can reach extraordinary people simply by picking up the telephone. The privilege of celebrity has become a tool for something much more important.
Richard Burton remains at the emotional centre of much of her story, and Boye amplifies the extraordinary passion of their relationship. Taylor and Burton were not simply two actors who fell in love while making Cleopatra. They became the ultimate Hollywood power couple, dominating newspaper headlines and magazine covers, their romance becoming as famous as the films they made together.
Yet beneath the celebrity circus, Boye gives us the sense of a genuine love story. One of the stories she tells particularly well comes from the making of Cleopatra. Burton is suffering from a hangover, and Taylor holds a cup to his lips. It is a small, intimate gesture, but it feels like a lightning rod for everything that drew these two people together. The glamour, the drinking, the physical attraction and the emotional dependency suddenly come together in one image.
Elizabeth Taylor’s life was almost as cinematic as her film career. We hear about Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Burton’s heavy boozing, his affairs and philandering, but also the laughter, the happier times and the extraordinary bond between them. There is also Taylor’s determination to support Burton and help him achieve Oscar recognition. Despite seven nominations, he never won. She is not simply the woman standing beside a famous actor. She is trying to help the man she loves.
Eddie Fisher, meanwhile, is increasingly disappearing from the picture. A confrontation between Fisher and Burton makes the outcome seem inevitable. If this were a contest for Taylor, there was only ever going to be one winner. Boye does not reduce Burton and Taylor to a succession of scandals. She understands that the contradictions are what made their relationship so compelling. This was a relationship of extraordinary intensity, but it was also turbulent, filled with addiction, infidelity and moments of real danger.
One of the most brutal scenes involves Fisher holding a gun to Taylor’s head before suggesting, in effect, that her beauty is the reason he cannot bring himself to kill her. It is a disturbing reminder that behind the diamonds, magazine covers and Hollywood glamour was a woman who could also find herself in terrifying situations.
Boye handles these tonal shifts with remarkable ease. The play can move from glamour to the AIDS crisis, from the great love story of Burton and Taylor to the painful memories of those who are no longer here. Nothing feels artificially separated because Taylor’s life itself contained these extremes.
That is the achievement of From Burton to Humanitarian. It does not ask us to forget Elizabeth Taylor the movie star in order to discover Elizabeth Taylor the campaigner. The glamour remains, as do the sensuality, wit and confidence. What changes is where she chooses to direct that power and trauma. Michael Weber directs, while the production is presented by Guy Masterson, who is Taylor’s nephew by marriage to Burton. That personal connection adds another intriguing dimension to a production dealing with Burton, Taylor and the people who inhabited their extraordinary orbit.
The telephone becomes the perfect symbol. Once Taylor’s fame brought the world to her. Now she is reaching out to the world. For 60 minutes, Boye keeps the audience listening, laughing and increasingly reflecting on what remains after the headlines have faded. Taylor’s life was as cinematic as her film career. What Boye captures here is what happened when the cameras stopped rolling, and Elizabeth Taylor decided that her fame and power could be used for something beyond herself.
- Call Me Elizabeth: From Burton to Humanitarian
- Assembly George Square, Studio Two
- 6–30 August (not 12th), 3.30 pm
- 60 mins
