Playing the shy Colin in Russell T Davies’s 2021 TV drama It’s a Sin, Callum Scott Howells had to be the humble caterpillar compared to Olly Alexander’s extravagant butterfly. But now Howells gets an upgrade to full butterfly status in this high-spirited and good-humoured drama from screenwriter Lisa Baker and director Celyn Jones, reclaiming a forgotten chapter in queer Victorian history.
With a moustache resembling that of Proust, Howells amusingly plays the flamboyant aristocrat Henry Paget, 5th Marquess of Anglesey, a delicate consumptive and aesthete who, in the late 19th century, blew his vast inheritance on colossal private theatricals, wild parties and jaw-dropping performances in which he would appear in gender-challenging costumes, including a diaphanous veil he wore as a “butterfly dancer”. He caused scandal with his behaviour and apparently unconsummated marriage to first cousin Lily (Ruby Stokes), whose attitude to him here is perhaps more affectionate and tolerant than it was in real life.
Rupert Everett is excellent in the fictionalised role of the kindly butler Gelert, and his performance reminds the viewer of his outstanding turn as Oscar Wilde in The Happy Prince, this drama’s tutelary deity. Paget’s defiant public career was – recklessly or courageously – conducted while the disgraced Wilde was still in prison; like Wilde, his life ended in French exile; and just as Wilde once described someone as “a peacock in everything but beauty”, so poor Paget is a Wildean in everything but talent. Certainly Wilde, a shrewd professional writer, would not have approved of living beyond one’s means.
The film imagines Paget wanting his theatricals to raise money for a supposed orphanage; the real reason may have been more narcissistic than that. Nevertheless, a strong turn from Howells.
• Madfabulous is in UK cinemas from 5 June.
