So much of what Spacey does so well is in the life behind his eyes, yet here he offers only limpid pools, providing Quoyle scant depth and even less charisma.In his dealings with the Newfoundland terrain, Hallstrom is on surer footing; the craggy, bleak landscape is magical on the screen. His natural romanticism enlivens the elements of myth and folklore, while his affinity with children is, once again, notable.Yet, despite moments where these look all set to lift the picture, it never truly takes off and its lack of anything approaching profundity eventually sinks it. While he may be praised for making a film so easy on the eye, Hallstrom’s mistake was to make it too easy on the brain.. Scathing reviews have cut short actor David Warner’s return to West End theatre, after a 30-year absence brought on by stage fright. But critics rubbished the play mercilessly and its final performance at the Lyric in Shaftesbury Avenue will be on 23 March. Even then, its five-week run will have been far longer than some reviewers felt it deserved.Although the final performance date had been left open, meaning it is not technically closing “early”, a spokesman admitted everyone was disappointed. Warner went on to spectacular career with the Royal Shakespeare Company in the 1960s with dazzling performances in Henry VI and Richard II, and a Hamlet which many critics and theatre fans considered definitive.But after playing the lead in an theatrical adaptation of I, Claudius, stage fright engulfed him and until last month he had not set foot on British boards since 1972.

Instead, he based himself in the United States, married an American and took dozens of rather less exacting roles in film and television, including Straw Dogs, Titanic and Hornblower. He overcame the stage fright only when he was persuaded to appear last year in George Bernard Shaw’s Major Barbara in New York, partly because his wife complained she had never seen him in the theatre. The performance was as acclaimed as Feast of Snails has been slated.Warner said he had chosen Olafsson’s play because his character, a millionaire industrialist eating a gourmet dinner alone in his mansion, was the kind of role he had been longing for “eccentric, outgoing, outspoken and a bit humorous”. Sadly, his critics had rather different adjectives in mind for it..

There is nothing like the faintest promise of Latin dance rhythms to bring out an avid audience, as Ballet Argentino found out for its British opening. Maybe people were enticed by the celebrity of the company’s founder, even though Julio Bocca is more a name echoed across the Atlantic, given the rarity of his guest performances here. Either way, they received the showcase of mostly Argentine contemporary ballet enthusiastically and, with Ana Maria Stekelman’s Piazzolla Tango Vivo, got everything they had come for. Only Bocca’s entrances truly heated up the stage, liberally dosed with sforzandos of the jumps and satiny turns that have been his passport to fame. Especially effective was the solo in which he could have been making love to a table, sliding above and around it, caressingly tilting against it.With his long experience and confident technique, Bocca is inevitably the company’s one star Yet he doesn’t play the star.

He has assertive contours and a sweeping dynamic, but he also comes across as attractively ungrand, the archetypal boy next door. And he ensures that everyone has their chance to shine, in solos and pas de deux as well as in transparent ensembles.For sure, there were plenty of all those in the rest of the programme. Adagietto, to the familiar Death in Venice Adagio from Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, found Lucas Oliva and Cecilia Figaredo almost suspended in watery blue light and performing extremely slow Kama Sutra poses – soulful curves, uplifted arms, elaborate interlockings. I have liked Oscar Araiz’s work in the past, but this reached a pinnacle of naffness.Robert Hill’s commissioned Encuentros (Encounters) would have been pleasantly classical if the dancing and bombastic piano concerto by Kurt Atterberg had known when to stop. The long middle movement found Rosana Perez twining round Bocca at such length, you felt you were being slowly throttled just watching, while the ensemble finale, where the dance motor kept reaching a close only to rev up again, made other protracted finales seem like rush jobs. By then we were too exhausted for Mauricio Wainrot’s Desde Lejos (From Far Away), another suite of dances with some original and effective groupings, but not offering enough contrast to the other pieces.Ballet Argentino uses simple means – with lighting as the only d?r and rather poor-quality musical reproduction – but it has youthful beauty on its side.