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LONDON BASED ACTRESS • VOICEOVER ARTIST • THEATRE MAKER
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Theatre Reviews
“The combination is beautifully realised in the restrained acting of Barry McGovern, and in the vitality of Maxine Fone. Her Rita is alert, alive, provocative, innocent, original.She arrives from Liverpool full of longing. Bewildered by what she does not know, but conscious above all of a yearning to experience the life of the mind.
Barry McGovern makes the difficult transformation into a sympathetic and feeling older man, who finds his young charge irritating and enchanting at the same time. This holding back on his part allows Maxine Fone to realise with great energy and flawless timing, the carefully constructed irreversibility of her change of character. Paced well, it’s an excellent night’s theatre.”
Bruce Arnold, Independent Ireland
“Maxine reads constantly around the area of fairies and goblins. She already had a lot of material, went and bought a lot more and told us a lot about what fairies do: all the types of fairies there are, bits of information which were quite useful for coming up with movement material as well. So a great deal of our conception of the sylphs came from her. Maxine saw herself very much as a vampire.”
Sir Matthew Bourne (On Maxine)
“The outstanding performance comes from a newcomer, Maxine Fone, as the Baroness of Boroughbridge, aka the Wicked Stepmother, very funny, with a pitch-perfect ear for her changing accents, and eminently booable.”
-Ron Simpson, WHATSONSTAGE
“Structured in a succession of short, staccato scenes, the play explores its characters with truth and dramatic tension. Maxine Fone is a vivacious, direct Rita, easy to like and empathise with. Barry McGovern's Frank, a hirsute figure in tweeds and cords, combines an intellectual cutting edge with the sense of a man teetering on the edge of a private cliff. Individually and in interaction, they are splendid.”
Gerry Colgan, The Irish Times
“Relatively conventional cupidity comes in the form of the mock-demure housemaid Sheila, at her best when reclining on the kitchen table, whether played by Maxine Fone or Valentina Formenti. Certainly Sam Archer and Richard Winsor as facets of Anthony can’t resist her oh-so-casually-extended bare ankle, and they soon yield utterly to their basest natures in deft embodiments of a ruling class unfit to rule even itself.”
Lewis Segal, Los Angeles Times
“A beautiful performance for harp and singer-dancer of Christina Rossetti’s ‘Goblin Market’, followed by supper. The singer-dancer was Maxine Fone, who had me completely mesmerised throughout her performance.”
Alwynn Marriage, Alderney festival
“With arms crossed and hands fluttering like flags, the dancers urge James on in his pursuit of the sprite (a gorgeous and dainty Maxine Fone). When he clips her wings, and the life drains out of her, the chorus crumples in sympathy.”
Anne Sacks, The Independent
“Maxine is a rising star- a fantastic comedienne who can blow anyone off the stage. Rita is her role, it comes so naturally to her.”
Karen Hebden, Chief Theatre Executive
“Maxine Fone's grubby minx of a Sylph haunts her man by ghoulishly riding his shoulder - a potent image against the shadows of Lez Brotherstone's set. And the moment when our hero, in the hope of rendering the Sylph human, chops off her wings, supplies a truly gothic frisson. The dreamer literally massacres his dream.”
Jenny Gilbert, The Independent
“In Bourne's updated version, The Sylph (Maxine Fone) is a ghoulish, teasingly sadistic grunge waif. Although he retains substantial chunks of the buoyant Lovenskjold score to which Bournonville's La Sylphide is danced, Bourne relocates the action to a council flat in Glasgow and, for Act ii, transports us to an urban forest in which Gorbals tower blocks outnumber trees.”
Sophie Constanti
“When our hero sees the voracious,vampish sylph (Maxine Fone) with her raggedy dress, white face and coal eyes, the room not only spins-the earth moves. She wreaks havoc in his council flat during his stag party and flots in and out of the wedding party and James is lost to his other wordly girl.”
Anne Sacks, The Independent
“Maxine Fone, who playhouse audiences will remember from last season’s production of ‘Educating Rita’ is just superb as the flighty spirit of Elvira in Blithe Spirit, still trying to tug the heartstrings of Charles.”
Jenni Land, Uttoxeter Echo
“Maxine fones sylph is wonderfully Malevolent, hands clawed, nostrils flared and i had high hopes for a good gory shredding of our oafish hero, but sadly it’s the sylph who gets shredded.”
Ismene Brown, The Telegraph
“I have heard of Maxine's acclaimed playing of Rita at Dublins Pavilion theatre and I hope she’s good for Derby.”
Willy Russell, Writer of the infamous play "Educating Rita”
“The production of the play by the Pavilion Theatre in Dun Laoghaire is the best I've seen, with Maxine Fone as the eponymous Rita giving a lot more light and shade to the part than most actors and certainly more than the irritating Julie Walters did in the film version.”
Emer O’Kelly, The Independent ireland
"Maxine Fone's sylph is a joy. Rejecting classical ballet traditions, she dances barefoot indeed, there are no pointe shoes in this production. Her character owes far more to traditional Celtic representations of the supernatural than to nineteenth-century romanticism. She leaps from mischievous, coke-sniffing, street urchin to tragic, mutilated victim in an instant, effortlessly bringing the audience with her.”
Jennifer Delaney, Ballet Magazine
“As always, much depends on the casting. I'd already imagined the sylph being like Tinkerbell, and I cast Maxine Fone in the role. She was just perfect. She’s got a naughty side to her, she can look very beautiful and she’s not a woman that will accept playing a little pretty, nothingy sort of female character. She has to have a bit more spunk. And, while everyone else was researching their human characters, she did lots of research into sylphs and fairies. It was very much her thing: she loves anything gothic; she loves horror movies.”
Sir Matthew Bourne (On Maxine)
“Maxine Fone’s Rita is engaging- we can see how tutor Frank falls for her. At times Fone is very powerful-nowhere more so than when explaining the ironies in the term working class culture. her final scene is beautiful- here is Rita, poised and at ease with herself. Fone brings home Russell’s point with sure fire aim-I'll choose.”
Rod Dungate, The Independent Ireland : Woman Celeb News
“Rita is a Tour de Force for any actress in the role and Fone doesn't dissapoint.Beautifully interpreted by Maxine Fone. Fone has the right amount of scouse aggression and childlike eagerness and is very endearing as she perches birdlike on the edge of chairs or sharpens endless pencils from a fluffy pencil case. A continuous two and a half hours onstage makes a huge demand on just two actors, not least in the sheer number of lines, neither of them flags at all here.”
Pat Ashworth, The Stage
“So much hinges on the quality of Rita and much has been made of Maxine Fone's rightness for the role. Indeed the director says she would not have programmed this play without Maxine, having seen her perform Rita at Dublins Pavilion Theatre. You can see why: shes sassy, effervescent and endearing.”
Ashley Franklin, Derby Evening Telegraph
“Elvira, pleasingly played by Maxine Fone as a sprightly, spiteful, spirit which never lapses into ghost in the house cliche.”
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