Madfabulous

A star-making turn from Callum Scott Howells has been due since his heartbreaking appearance as gay tailor Colin in Russell T Davies AIDS-crisis drama It’s A Sin in 2021. Thankfully, he has been thrust into the spotlight by actorand sometime director Celyn Jones, for whom Madfabulous marks a second stint behind the camera. Howells portrays Henry Paget, 5th Marquess of Anglesey: a largely forgotten figure in Welsh queer history, whom Jones and writer Lisa Baker have resurrected after discovering his portrait at the Paget family seat, Plas Newydd.

Henry died in 1905 at the age of 29, an exuberant figure who frittered away his family fortune and left his ancestors in debt; a largely unsympathetic character. Yet Howells plays the Marquess with overwhelming heart, a man whose privilege allowed him to live as his authentic self in opulent fashions and in staunch denial of the strictures of conservative, upper-class society. Ruby Stokes matches the glint in Henry’s eye as his cousin and wife Lily — togetherthey present an alternative, proto-Bloomsbury Group form of queer relationship. They are watched over by Jeeves-like butler Gelert, a perfectly cast Rupert Everett. His telling of the legend of his namesake, the Gelert greyhound of Welsh folklore, is the film’s tenderest moment.

The production is impressively lavish given its fairly low budget, bolstered by a terrific score from Dan Baboulene. The highlight of Howells’ performance is his staging of the Marquess’ famous ‘butterfly dance’, borrowed from Loïe Fuller and familiar to early-cinema aficionados in the work of Alice Guy-Blaché. Moving to music in voluminous silk robes in imitation of wings, the effect recalls the cinema of Powell and Pressburger, drawing us into Henry’s unique inner world of freedom and expression. Delicately played by the entire cast, ‘Madfabulous’ sounds about right.