Reviewing: Mary Stuart at the Duke of York Theatre

The entire audience is holding it's breath, as two women in velvet jackets step slowly onto the stage, each a mirror of the other, and bow.

Juliet Stevenson and Lia Williams - all photos © Manuel Harlan

"Heads," cried Juliet Stevenson. The coin sang metallically as it spun, and it settled defiantly on tails. The ensemble turned to Lia Williams and bowed as one; she had won the role of Elizabeth I for this afternoon.

On paper, this adapation of Fredrich Schiller's 1800 play is... me. It has everything I'm passionate about: great actresses playing powerful women, Tudor history - it even has a soundtrack by Laura Marling, probably my favourite solo musician. But for some reason, I kept putting off going to see it.

Due to my day-job (ironically mostly evenings) in a theatre, I am always sighing as productions I'm desperate to see slide off the ends of their runs without seeing them. If it's not time that's my excuse, it's money. I exist in a limbo of just-about-or-not-quite scraping by.

But I was in town anyway, and I went into the Duke of York's box office willing to walk away if the cost proved too great. There weren't any day seats left by the time I arrived, just after one, but when I explained my situation the smiling woman in the box office happily repriced a seat for me - Skint Londoning tip: it pays to be nice to box office staff!

Reviews I had read, and the enthusiasm of friends at work who had seen it, had got me excited, although I still didn't entirely know what to expect. What I got was a pared-down set, remarkable for its simplicity and its symmetry. The slightly grimy-looking brick walls contrasted with the brisk, chic suits-and-silk-shirts aesthetic once the actors assembled onstage.

The middle of the set revolved sometimes, giving the show, the spectacle of passion and politics, an unstable and unpredictable dynamism upon which to unfold its action.

The text of Icke's adaptation is tightly packed, but rich. The actors mined and squeezed every last drop out of it; I'm almost glad I saw it closer to the end of the run, as seldom have I witnessed a cast so tuned-in, so attentive to detail, as this one.

The Flip of a Coin

Starting the show with a coin-toss is a stroke of genius, in my opinion, because it instantly raises the stakes - both for the actors and the audience. There was an energy ringing in the air. And it serves perfectly as a metaphor for Elizabeth's anguish over her decision - there but for the grace of god went she, and she knew it.

It is this struggle that the play focuses on, with the structure of the play's five acts mirroring the more obvious visually-pleasing symmetry of their bodies and costumes in the space; The first act takes place in Mary's prison, where the walls almost seem to be closing in; they take on a strange sense of expanding to create the cold of Queen Elizabeth's political chambers for the second act; the central act is a fantastical meeting of the two queens; then the structure mirrors itself with the fourth act in Westminster and the fifth, showing us Mary's dignified final moments, back in prison.

(it's not spoilers if it's history, people)

Lia Williams as Elizabeth I

All the photos I can seem to find seem to be - luckily for me - of Stevenson playing the queen in prison and Williams the queen in power. Luckily for me, because that was how it was when I saw it. However, I am sad that I will almost definitely not have the opportunity to see it the other way round, the coin flipped; Williams took on the invisible coronet as if born to it, and Stevenson's Stewart was perfectly defiant, strong and so, so angry - as if that anger had really been stewing for nineteen long years of unjust imprisonment.

Now, I'm aware this is probably my Carol (2015) Complex talking - I have a definite older women thing, especially when those older women are in suits, but there was something just sexy about Lia Williams' Elizabeth I. There's a reason Elizabeth is one of my favourite figures from history. Elizabeth's precarious childhood contrasts with her current omnipotence, resulting in a tempest of a person, a ticking time bomb - now cruel, now compassionate.

Juliet Stevenson as Mary Stuart

In contrast, Stevenson's Scottish queen had a sense of level-headedness, even when muttering conspiracies in her first scene; of dignity, even when walking to her death dressed in a sack. Her Mary Stewart is seriously smart, switched-on - always playing the men around her like a fiddle; The one time she loses control is in the central act, dancing like a child in a playground, and later exploding, sending a furious Elizabeth packing at the end of their confrontation, screaming at her "I AM YOUR KING!"

In conclusion, if you get the chance to grab a day seat and check out this play before it closes at the end of March, do not lose your head and pass it up!

That was a terrible pun, possibly my worst yet. You're welcome.

Yours,

Char

xxx

Song for Mary Stuart by Laura Marling