Christian McKay steals the show as Orson Welles

Richard Linklater's new film Me and Orson Welles stars High School Musical heart-throb Zac Efron in the 'Me' role. But while Efron has received good reviews for his turn as an insecure 17-year-old who finds himself spending a week with the great director, it is British newcomer Christian McKay whose uncanny turn as Welles has created the biggest buzz.

It is 1937 and Orson Welles is already a darling of the New York theatre scene at just 22. Welles is in the final week of rehearsals for what would become his legendary version of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar - a radical 90-minute restaging set in contemporary fascist Italy - at the Mercury Theater. Efron's character, Richard Samuels, stumbles in on the rehearsals and lands himself a last-minute part.

Although 36, McKay both looks and sounds like Welles as a dynamic and ambitious young man, just prior to his radio adaptation of HG Wells's War of the Worlds and his seminal first feature film, Citizen Kane. The performance by McKay, a RADA-trained stage actor and former concert pianist, has elicited rave reviews from critics and there's a lot of talk of awards.

The Wall Street Journal's film critic Joe Morgenstern called McKay "an excellent English actor who bears, or somehow simulates, a facial resemblance to the great man, and nails Welles's expression of pouty, aggrieved amusement" while Variety's Todd McCarthy hailed McKay's performance as the "indisputable highlight" of the film.

Time's Mary Pols described McKay as "exceptional", however she did call the 14-year age difference between McKay and Welles in 1937 the one "insurmountable" problem. "Passing for Welles at 22 is more than a stretch, especially when you're up against the world's biggest teenybopper."

Although a newcomer to film, McKay has played Welles in a one-man show, Rosebud: the Lives of Orson Welles, at sell-out performances at the 2004 Edinburgh Festival and off-Broadway in New York last year. The phenomenal word-of-mouth reviews reached director Richard Linklater (Slacker, Before Sunrise and School of Rock) in Texas. After flying to New York to see McKay's play, Linklater asked him to screen-test for Me and Orson Welles.

Now McKay is being lauded as the go-to man to play Welles. "Christian McKay is the best screen Welles stand-in to date, easily raising the bar set by Angus Macfadyen, Liev Schreiber, Vincent d'Onofrio and Danny Huston," wrote Kim Newman in a four-star review for Empire.

Playing the role of one of Hollywood's greatest film directors certainly appears to have been a good career move for McKay, who has since shot two more films. He will appear in the forthcoming Howard Marks biopic Mr Nice, playing an MI6 man, and has filmed a few scenes in Woody Allen's next film, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger.

WHAT THEY ARE SAYING:Nigel Andrews, Financial Times:"Here we re-meet the man himself, thanks to the magic of what we must now name “LR”, Living Reincarnation, the process by which evolution has outpaced digitisation. Look at Mackay. Look at the handsome-pudgy features, listen  to the rolling bass voice, appraise the twinkling eye, marvel at the offhand flourishes of the titanic frame. This is Welles. Don’t let doubters spoil your fun or dent your faith in the eternal self-renewals of Darwinian theory.” (Verdict: four stars out of five).

Dave Calhoun, Time Out: "All roads lead to Welles, but we also witness a brief affair between Richard (Zac Efron) and Mercury staffer Sonja Jones (Claire Danes), during which Richard learns that the public and the private are one and the same in this theatrical hothouse. Even the loss of his virginity infringes on Welles's mantra: 'There is one simple rule: I own the store!'" (Verdict: four stars out of five)

AO Scott, New York Times: "Disenchantment is part of the magic, and Me and Orson Welles strikes a persuasive balance between naivete and cynicism, both of which are necessary to the theatrical enterprise. Art is a fairy tale we choose to believe in, and this movie, a fiction confected about real people, is too good not to be true."

Todd McCarthy, Variety: "Shot in the unlikely setting of the Isle of Man, notably in its restored Gaiety Theater, which fills in beautifully, and London, pic does a reasonable job of repping Depression-era Gotham on a budget. But the film, and the comic moments in particular, could have used more snap, some real New York energy."

Mary Pols, Time: "Welles is brilliantly embodied by Christian McKay in one of those, hey-who's-that? performances that tends to draw Oscar talk, even if the film itself isn't much more than an extremely pleasant lark." ·