What I liked
The Sacred Beasts is an incisive and witty exploration into the psyches of two towering figures of twentieth century arts, Ernest Hemingway and Orson Welles, zeroing in on three encounters between the men at three different stages in their lives. Each of the three encounters is presented by a different pair of actors in the roles, and though there is little visual continuity between the three different Hemingway/Welles pairings (and not all that great a physical resemblance between the actors and the real-life personalities they are portraying), the performances are uniformly excellent and convey a believable continuum of character, The story takes us from their days of highest ambition and confidence to their later fearful years when their powers and options had deserted them, giving us two men who strove to bring art to the common man but who both suffered from a type of self-loathing reserved for the very uncommon. Chris Wollman’s script is thoughtful, wry and amusing, and his cast brings out the best of it in this vastly entertaining talk-piece.
What I didn't like
Only improvement I can imagine would be less limited restroom access prior to and after the show, made difficult by the right scheduling of performances.
My overall impression
Powerful portrait of two fragile giants
