Review: “Link-Link” by Isabella Rossellini, Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, 23 October 2018- Trouper Rating: ***

Isabella Rossellini is something of an enigma. She is a sometime actress – the star of films such as Blue Velvet – but who came to the attention of most people over 30 not through her movie performances, but through her static pictures in the pages of the glossies, as the impossibly chic and glamorous face of Lancome.

Many moons have passed during which she was dumped by Lancome for being forty, and then brought back to the fold when a woman took over the company. She’s on stage at London’s South Bank with a one-woman show. It’s not about her time as a model, or her glamorous parents Ingrid Bergman and director Roberto Rossellini. Not even about her film career. Instead she’s here to give us a lecture – in a good way.

When she first appears she comes on screaming which is certainly striking, but soon she settles into lecturer mode, standing at the front of the stage or classroom talking to her interested pupils in the audience. She’s decked out in a red top and a black skirt, the latter with two cream “flaps” hanging down at the front in the shape of trouser legs. So far, so weird. She’s not alone on stage either as she’s companied by her own terrier, Pan, along with puppeteer and dancer Schuyler Beeman. Between them, they take us on a voyage which looks at what distinguishes humans from animals. There are clips, there are graphics and there are toys laid out on the stage. Every so often, the adorable Pan sprints on, does a turn and gets a treat in return. Beeman does similar, but without the treat.

It’s all a bit bonkers.

But Rossellini is an amiable teacher, full of enthusiasm which gets her through the 80 minute lecture with only a passing reference to her notes – placed at a lecturn, obvs. It’s refreshing in a way that she hadn’t taken the obvious route of blabbing on about her career and her parents, but there will be many in an audience (which included Hollywood actor Stanley Tucci) who might have wished she had gone down the easy road.

Here’s the great lady herself with more about the show.

Photo Credit: Fabrizio Ferri