I watched most of Me and Orson Welles with my mouth agape. Not because the film is so good (it is, in fact, perfectly delightful), but because of the astonishing performance of an English actor you have never heard of. Christian McCay has only appeared in a handful of British films, but he was born to play Orson Welles. His performance is mesmerizing. It is as if Orson Welles himself rose from the grave, shed several hundred pounds and 60 years, and walked imperiously back on screen.

Me and Orson Welles is set in New York, circa 1937. Welles (McCay) and John Houseman (Eddie Marsan) have just formed the Mercury Theatre and have decided to stage “Julius Caesar,” set in contemporary fascist Italy, as their first production. Welles, a boy genius whose breathtaking creative intellect is matched only by his towering, colossal ego, leads a consortium of players — Joseph Cotton (James Tupper), Gretta Adler (Zoe Kazan), George Coulouris (Ben Chaplin) — whose names would become synonymous with some of the greatest stage and film productions of all time. Enter Richard Samuels (Zac Efron), a 17-year-old high school student who has nothing to recommend him but his ambition. Desperate to fill a small but crucial role, Welles casts Richard right off the sidewalk.

Thrust into the wildly uneven world of theatre, Richard tries to navigate learning his part and avoiding run-ins with their captivating but temperamental director. He is befriended by Sonja (Claire Danes), a production assistant, who teaches him more than just the ins and outs of the stage. As the production, flying high one moment and in shambles the next, limps toward a daunting opening night, Richard basks in a creative stew few people ever get to see. If his burgeoning career can survive crossing swords with Welles is a different matter entirely.

A couple of years ago, the sublime Canadian television series Slings and Arrows dissected the agony and ecstasy of staging Shakespeare. Director Richard Linklater captures some of that same verve here, but traps it within a historical moment, creating for the stage what the film The Player did for Hollywood. Me and Orson Welles indulges in a lot of historical name dropping, industry-speak and theatre lingo. If you are familiar with the cultural oeuvre, the film will be a more edifying experience, but it is certainly not necessary. The groundbreaking “Julius Caesar” would, of course, go on to become one of the most lauded Broadway productions of all time, a mercilessly pared-down, radically innovative play that introduced the world to one of its most luminous stars.

This is Orson Welles in the embryonic stage of his career. He is not yet being courted by Hollywood. The “War of the Worlds” broadcast is still to come. But Welles, the man and the carefully crafted persona, is already a human hurricane, a titanic narcissist, a ravenous womanizer, a gargantuan talent. Rather than pick a known actor who could do a reasonable Welles, Linklater went with an unknown commodity who could do a perfect Welles (he found McCay portraying Welles in a stage production). McCay’s Welles is as good as it gets—the famous actor’s look, baritone sound and fastidious mannerisms are spot on.

The irony is that although McCay, who is 36, looks every bit the part of Welles, he is, technically, portraying a 22-year-old young man, just five years older than Efron’s Richard. Linklater wisely sweeps this age disparity under the rug and, in truth, it does not hurt the film; indeed, had Welles been cast closer to his actual age at the time, it would have been a very different film.

An amazing thing happens when Efron, the impossibly good looking Disney teen heartthrob, is placed beside the unknown McCay. He utterly and completely vanishes. Tackling his first dramatic role, Efron appears to be consciously dialing down his rather formidable effervescence. It is a mistake. While the everyman through whom we gain access into this rarified world, Efron’s Richard, who never looks like he’s having as much fun as he should be having, is simply swallowed whole by McCay’s performance. It is, at least, historically accurate.

Me and Orson Welles, based on a novel by Robert Kaplow, is a whimsically good time buttressed by one of the finest performances of the year. The screenplay, oozing the sort of historical minutiae that will have Welles aficionados vibrating with excitement, also incorporates iconic elements from other Welles films (the lit cigarette in the shadowy doorway from The Third Man, for instance). Welles’ final words in the film are some of the funniest and most revealing. Looking out over an adoring, jubilant crowd giving the opening night production a three-minute standing ovation, he mutters to himself, “How the hell do I top this?” The answer would come two years later in the form of Citizen Kane, still considered the finest American film ever made. No doubt it was a question he asked of himself then too.

© Copyright 2009 Brandon Fibbs. All rights reserved.