A Star-Making Role, Long Overdue
Callum Scott Howells has been waiting for a role that would push him into the front rank ever since 2021, when his portrayal of the gay tailor Colin in Russell T Davies's AIDS-crisis drama It's A Sin left audiences heartbroken. That moment has finally arrived, thanks to the actor and occasional director Celyn Jones, for whom 'Madfabulous' is a second outing behind the camera.
Rescuing a Forgotten Figure
Here Howells takes on Henry Paget, the 5th Marquess of Anglesey — a name almost entirely lost to Welsh queer history. Jones and writer Lisa Baker brought him back to life after stumbling upon his portrait at Plas Newydd, the Paget family seat.
Henry died in 1905 at just 29. He was an extravagant man who squandered his family's fortune and saddled his descendants with debt — by most measures an unsympathetic figure. And yet Howells plays the Marquess with so much heart that he wins us over. This was a man whose wealth and privilege let him live as his true self, draped in opulent fashions and openly rejecting the rigid expectations of conservative, upper-class society.
The Relationship at Its Centre
That same spark in Henry's eye is mirrored by Ruby Stokes as Lily, his cousin and wife. Together they embody an alternative, proto-Bloomsbury Group kind of queer partnership. Watching over them is the Jeeves-like butler Gelert, played to perfection by Rupert Everett. His retelling of the legend of his namesake — Gelert, the greyhound of Welsh folklore — is the film's most tender moment.
Production, Score and Performance
For a fairly modest budget, the production looks remarkably lavish, lifted further by a terrific score from Dan Baboulene. The peak of Howells's performance is his staging of the Marquess's celebrated 'butterfly dance', borrowed from Loïe Fuller and recognisable to early-cinema enthusiasts from the work of Alice Guy-Blaché. Swaying to the music in flowing silk robes that mimic wings, the effect evokes the cinema of Powell and Pressburger, pulling us into Henry's singular inner world of freedom and self-expression. Played with delicacy by the whole cast, 'Madfabulous' turns out to be exactly the right title.
