Suspicion runs riot and trust is in short supply. That much is evident before a word is spoken in Robert Icke’s terrific adaptation of Friedrich Schiller’s verse play Mary Stuart which runs at the Almeida Theatre in London until 21 January. As the trendy wendy’s of Islington blow the froth off their mochachocolatas and the yummy mummy’s of Upper Street bound in from their Zumba classes after dropping off Sebastian and Francesca with their Polish nannies, one by one the sixteen-strong cast gather on Hildegard Bechtler’s sparse but effective set: a dark wooden revolve with three pop-up benches encircled by a two-foot wide corridor. At the back, a brick wall. There is nowhere to run, no place to hide.

Photo: Almeida

Queen Elizabeth I’s chief adviser Burleigh (Vincent Franklin) steals a glance at Leicester (John Light), a friend and former suitor of the Protestant monarch, who in turn sizes up Mary, Queen of Scots’ custodian Paulet (Sule Rimi) and his Catholic sympathiser nephew Mortimer (Rudi Dharmalingam). Other poker-faced protagonists slowly join suit as they traverse the empty space with caution and charge the deafening silence with a current which is in danger of short-circuiting. Step forward Juliet Stevenson and Lia Williams. A coin is spun, heads or tails is called and that is what determines which actress will play the frigid Elizabeth and which will play the passionate Mary who sought asylum from her first cousin once removed but was imprisoned on suspicion of plotting her murder.

This coin toss, though, is more than a cute idea to generate publicity or add a frisson of tension into the performances of Stevenson and Williams who incidentally rise to the occasion with aplomb and deliver a masterclass in acting which will stay with me for a long time, for what it symbolises is one of the key themes of the play: fate. Though one is doomed to die and the other is destined to rule, but for a quirk of fortune or a sudden change in circumstance such as Mortimer’s failed attempt to free Mary or Elizabeth’s close brush with death at the hands of Catholic rebels, the shoe could so easily have been on the other foot. Or rather, the crown could so easily have been on the other head and the axe could so easily have fallen on the other neck.

As the five acts and three hours of utterly absorbing drama pass, the Queens come to realise that they have more in common than they think. Mary is shackled in a windowless cell and sentenced to die for a crime which she did not commit and of which there is no proof; Elizabeth suffocates under the weight of responsibility, is at the mercy of public opinion, has been excommunicated by the Pope, is under attack from the Spanish Armada and attempts to quell a Catholic uprising through an arranged marriage to a Parisian prince are dismissed with a withering, “There is no prince in Europe I would lesser surrender to than France.”

Photo: Almeida

Plots and counterplots are hatched by Leicester and Mortimer to free Mary and assassinate Elizabeth, and all the while pressure is mounting on Elizabeth from Burleigh and her restless subjects to sign Mary’s death warrant. If she does, her history and legacy she fears will turn to “mud”; if she doesn’t, she will most likely end up face down in the mud. “The crown is but a prison cell with jewels,” she bemoans. She wears it, grudgingly, but realises that “to serve is to be a slave” and that “Mary holds all the cards.” In the end, through a combination of chance and a misunderstanding by her young undersecretary Davison (David Jonsson) who passes on the signed warrant to the powers at be rather than keep it in under lock and key, Mary Queen of Scots got her head chopped off.

Juliet Stevenson and Lia Williams were terrific and delivered the finest stage performances I have seen in recent memory. On the matinee I attended, the former played Elizabeth with a tremendous steeliness, which slowly crumbled to doubt and confusion as the walls of opportunity literally closed in around her. While the latter’s transformation went in the opposite direction: from a fist of anger as she howled against the illegality of her imprisonment to a caress of love as she bid farewell to her handmaidens, thanked her “faithful, beautiful” nanny Kennedy (Carmen Munroe) for her lifelong service and repented her sins – which included her role in the murder of her former husband but not of plotting to kill Elizabeth – to her steward and newly ordained Catholic priest Melville (Eileen Nicholas).

I am not a historian. Facts have obviously been fabricated to furnish the fiction with drama. But to use an old Scottish saying, Robert Icke’s self-directed adaptation of Schiller’s 217-year-old verse play is much like Mary, Queen of Scots herself: pure dead brilliant!

 

Peter Callaghan
Latest posts by Peter Callaghan (see all)