Eric D. Snider  Stage Beauty  Everyone knows, if only from
watching "Shakespeare in Love," that female roles in plays were
performed by men in Elizabethan England, and women did not
appear on stage. Jeffrey Hatcher's play "Compleat Female Stage
Beauty," which he has adapted into a new film that is called
"Stage Beauty" and which is directed by Richard Eyre, shows what
happened next: In the 1660s, King Charles II lifted the ban,
women began acting, and the men whose expertise was in playing
female roles were suddenly out of work.  It's an historical
event brimming with comic and dramatic possibilities, and "Stage
Beauty," a droll, tart-tongued film, explores many of them. We
find Ned Kynaston (Billy Crudup), a real-life person who was
widely regarded as the finest, most beautiful female performer
of his day. His specialty is Desdemona, her death scene drawing
standing ovations every night. Kynaston isn't the lead -- that
would be Othello, played by Betterton (Tom Wilkinson), the
troupe leader and theater owner