“You can’t just quit a show because a director made you feel weird. You’ll never get hired again,” fifteen year old Emily is warned by a fellow actor. It’s dubious and harmful advice, to say the least. But it’s typical of the kind of nonchalance that all of the adults in Emily’s life display. She is let down all of the adults around her whilst she participates in an emotionally abusive and exploitative avant-garde theatre troupe.
Writer / director Sarah Galea-Davis’s film The Players makes its international debut at the Glasgow Film Festival. It’s quiet, intense and brooding; it’s devoid of the histrionics you might expect of a close-knit theatre ensemble. Instead, it’s dripping with sepia toned theatre lights, unsteady close ups and unsettling dynamics. It’s an exploration of power within the theatre scene; how easy it is for “direction” to become an excuse for humiliation and taking advantage.
It’s summer 1994. Emily (Stefani Kimber) has found herself plucked from obscurity and cast in a seven hour version of Hamlet, where half the script has been replaced by movement pieces and interpretive dance. She is thrilled to be accepted by her much older colleagues, as life at home has not been smooth of late due to her parents’ separation. But when director Reinhardt Frank (Vikings’ Eric Johnson) starts to pay her more and more attention, Emily struggles to cope with the very adult situation she finds herself in.
What starts off as seemingly innocent fun – a glass of booze to join the adults in a toast or a sneaked cigarette to feel grown up – quickly descends into outright manipulation. Reinhardt declares that Emily would look better with short hair and so his girlfriend, Marley (Jess Salgueiro) gets the scissors out. No one bats an eyelid, either, when he suggests setting Emily’s costume on fire. Excuse and after excuse is doled out for a pattern of predatory behaviour with young ingenues. Galea-Davis is strong in her condemnation of Reinhardt – he is a pretentious, odious man with a fragile ego – but equally of those around him. Why is no one stepping in? Why is no one calling it out?
Kimber and Johnson are excellent in their respective roles. Kimber brings youthful enthusiasm in abundance to Emily. Initially, she is full of adolescent awkwardness, repeatedly tucking her hair behind her ears and shy about her performance abilities. In conversation, she is earnest in her attempt to appear interesting and experienced around her grown up colleagues. She, no doubt, sees this theatre family as a replacement for her flight mother and angry father. She is vulnerable; something Reinhardt spots from the offset.
Johnson is stroppy and charming; passionate and dangerous. More often than not, his temper (and his ego) get the better of him. His desire to dominate clearly stems from feelings of inadequacy. There’s a particularly glorious scene where a festival director explains that he hasn’t seen his latest work, “… but my assistant said she was riveted.” Johnson’s eyes burn with humiliation and rage. He is the one who does the bruising. His ability to switch between softly spoken compliments and firmly gripped instructions is quite alarming to behold. It’s an intense performance that revels, somewhat, in its loathsomeness.
“All directors are going to want to sleep with you … You gotta play the game,” an actress unhelpfully suggests. The Players raises a lot of questions about the theatre world. Why are all of these adults having such emotionally complex and intimate conversations with a sheltered fifteen year old girl? How can these women victim blame someone so vulnerable? Where is the sense of sisterhood and shared experience? But, of course, these questions have come up time and again since the #MeToo movement really took hold and the answers are rarely simple. Galea-Davis wants us, as viewers, to feel anger and disgust. But would we behave any differently, she seems to ask. The Players is an interesting, complex film that exposes the potential abuses within the theatre industry. It’s quietly dangerous and emotionally charged throughout. Both Stefani Kimber and Eric Johnson are magnetic leads.
The Players is showing at Glasgow Film Festival 2025. Get your tickets here.
Editor at Moviescramble. European cinema, grisly thrillers and show stopping musicals are my bag. Classic Hollywood Cinema is comfort food. Spare time is heavily dependent on a lot of pizza and power ballads.
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