MARIA STUART. To 31 August.

Edinburgh International Festival

MARIA STUART
by Friedrich Schiller

Burgtheater, Vienna at King's Theatre. To 31 August 2002 (In German with English supertitles)
Sat 6pm
Runs 3hr 20min One interval

TICKETS 0131 473 2000
Review Timothy Ramsden 30 August

So this is why we have an International Festival drama programme. A production on a scale, and with an imaginative grasp of both play and staging, that's breathtakingFitting enough a play built around the power struggles and personalities of two women should have an almost all-female production team. Even more fitting a major drama by one of Germany's two classical masters (in tabloid terms, the man who wrote the lyrics for Beethoven's Choral Symphony) should be realised with a breadth and understanding that make this sombre, enthralling production the best of the handful of Mary Stuarts I have seen in Britain (the next best, very different, was some 20 years ago at Nottingham Playhouse).

We begin midway through the violation of imprisoned Catholic would-be ruler of England Mary Stuart's belongings And it feels like an interruption. The workmen rifling open her furniture are in the unnatural poses you only see when coming upon people part-way through a hefty manual task. They're doing it with the physical concentration and lack of thought for the context of their actions you'd find with anyone for whom handling other people's possessions is daily routine.

The exception is Mary's gaoler, Paulet. Johannes Terne gives him a disgust in the curled features and ironic voice with which he talks to Mary, that makes surprising his later defence of her human rights as a prisoner. It's something which undermines the moral positions of the scheming, rich-robed Lords who want her done away with on the quiet.

Contrasting him is his nephew, the honest if impetuous youth Mortimer, sudden and intense in movement but open to exploitation by Leicester, whose love for Mary will never be allowed to compromise his position with Elizabeth. The stale routine adoration of his aging queen blots out open expression of any feeling he has for her rival.

Look at Schiller's script on the page and it could seem filled with forbidding long speeches. But it's fine dramatic writing,closely leading its characters' minds through often labyrinthine and conflicting thought processes in an exciting distillation of the clashes and paradoxes of power.

Leicester's self-interested guile stands between Shrewsbury, honest and in the small minority of Lords voting against Mary's death. Yet he's the one who saves Elizabeth's life - at some cost we see, when he subsequently enters arm in sling - after the meeting of the two women which Schiller invented as his dramatic centre.

But it's spymaster and pragmatist Burleigh who gets his way, at the cost of his nervous junior Davison. Forcing his inferior to hand over the death sentence Elizabeth's signed but not clearly authorised putting into effect, he has Mary beheaded.

At least he seems to reassure Davison with a hand on the shoulder - while the Queen's not looking - of help to come when the young man's hauled off to the Tower as Elizabeth veers against Mary's death faced with public support for the imprisoned woman (the Elizabethan equivalent of a focus group determining policy?). And it's the supercool Burleigh, in Gerd Bockmann's assured performance, who refuses to be ordered away by the Queen he serves. The final image shows him sitting at ease; it's Elizabeth who totters uncertainly across the room.

He's also smoking a huge cigar - a type he offers round to potential supporters. Walter Raleigh's discovery is used to contrast this influence against the little nerve-calming cigarette Mary's maid Hanna snatches a chance to smoke when they're allowed into the gardens of Fotheringhay Castle for the engineered meeting of the Queens.

I wouldn't trust Corinna Kirchhoff's Mary a moment. She makes her final Confession with Heinz Frolich's gravely loyal Melville, who's taken priestly orders so he can smuggle himself in to her for this purpose, but does so in the only bright frock of the evening - a reminder of earthly pleasures at Heaven's Gate. Right to this moment too every moment of pleading, the girlish lying against Elizabeth's starchily upright figure, is a pose she'll snap out from in an instant. Even the stately, solemnly staged final Confession ends with her flinging herself elegantly towards Leicester, come to take her to execution.

Ambition and a sense of injustice burn together in this woman. You can see how, with her fair hair, neatly groomed then suddenly flying splendidly wild as her mind and heart, she'd inspire both the wily Leicester and the romantic Mortimer. But, aged, dried-up, unpredictable as she is, it's clear from Elisabeth Orth's commanding yet self-worrying figure that England was governed by the woman fitter to rule.

Andrea Breth's production is characterised by an acutely appropriate contrast of stillness and movement - agitated patrolling and urgent rushing of the governing classes as events unfold around them and they seek to calculate and influence these to their various ends.

The stage spills out into the stalls for the first act, making the violation of Mary's privacy seem to invade our own space. Throughout, huge walls slide around, creating a hostile sense of power politics dwarfing individuals, making them constantly need to realign themselves. Characters whisper urgently as action unfolds and spaces change around them: always, someone might be listening. Characters appear round the side of huge walls - sometimes, almost as in a comedy, they appear unexpectedly - or at one, then another, side. But it's no joke; nor is it when people emerge as tiny figures through huge doors - the state and its business far outstretch the individuals seeking to direct it, even those at the very top.

Staging and acting make this a thrilling realisation of a superbly written drama, one that will remain relevant as long as power is wielded by individuals, moulding their futures in return.

Elizabeth I: Elisabeth Orth
Mary Stuart: Corinna Kirchhoff
Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester: Michael Konig
George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury: Martin Scwab
Wiliam Cecil, Lord Burleigh: Gerd Bockmann
Earl of Kent: Roland Kenda
William Davison: Roland Koch
Amias Paulet: Johannes Terne
Mortimer: Nicholas Ofczarek
Count Aubespine: Franz J. Csencits
Count Believre/Bodyguard: Denis Petkovic
O' Kelly/Bodyguard: Johannes Zirner
Drugeon Drury: Karl Mittner
Melville: Heinz Frolich
Hanna Kennedy: Gertraud Jesserer
Warrington: Dieter Witting
Page: Markus Mossmer
Lad8ies in Waiting: Vera Blaha, Verena Bodem, Claudia Haber, Claudia Durstberger, Romana Klotz, Monika Huber

Director: Andrea Breth
Designer: Annette Murschetz
Lighting: Alexander Koppelmann
Costume: Susanne Raschig, Dorothee Uhrmacher
Music: Elena Chernin
Dramaturg: Wolfgang Wiens

2002-08-31 11:21:06