MARIA STUART. To 5 March.
London
MARIA STUART
by Friedrich Schiller translated by Hilary Collier Sy-Quia and Peter Oswald
Union Theatre 204 Union Street SE1 To 5 March 2005
Tue-Sat 7.30pm
Runs 2hr 35min One interval
TICKETS: 020 7261 9876
www.uniontheatre.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 11 February
Vivid production evokes a world of intrigue and danger.This production comes from an outfit called Scary Little Girls. Scary or not, they're certainly Impressive. This production has a clarity and purpose that drives into the imagination, making any technical imperfections hardly matter.
Schiller wrote this play about halfway between the later years of England's Elizabeth I and Elizabeth II. In the 1580s Euro-Catholic conspiracies were feared by recently-Protestantised England, with its heirless Virgin Queen; Mary was a ready-made monarch of Catholic England in waiting. A practised politician like John Gorick's sleek-machine Burleigh wants her safely dead. Yet morality prevents her jailer Paulet allowing dirty tricks while a loyal servant like Livy Armstrong's grizzled Shrewsbury cannot countenance Mary's execution without evidence of a crime. Meanwhile Elizabeth dithers.
Ryan McBride's production brilliantly exploits Schiller's central, invented meeting of the two monarchs - here on snow-covered land. It's a disaster waiting to happen, Mary's moment of comparative liberty interrupted by the cacophony of horn and hounds from Elizabeth's hunting party. Neither woman's pleased to see the other and their high-handed assertiveness needs all the courtiers' strength to be kept from a physical fight.
McBride builds on this meeting in later scenes as Mary, transformed from prison-black to creamy elegance, silently haunts Elizabeth's thoughts while, in a brilliant final touch, it's the dead Mary's voice that tells the lonely Elizabeth her courtier-lover's fled overseas.
Rebecca Mordan's ruler is isolated by her Elizabethan dress and ruff among others' modern clothing. She crushes this elaborate garb as she sinks wearily, and anachronistically, into a modern armchair, visibly signing the burdens of monarchy. Surrounded by men with sticks, which form into shapes aggrandising or protective, while making her appear like a formal picture to her people, her voice has a dangerously metallic inhumanity till the later, more confessional scenes. She's every way contrasted by Lucinda Raikes' Mary, alive, individual, feminine, manipulative yet heart-warming.
Around them move the men in suits, ever-present from the opening photo-lab scene, where a photo-montage Mary is moved puppet-like before the head photo's ripped off. It foretells her fate, while also setting the tone for the exciting, danger-edged production to come.
Lord Shrewsbury/Priest: Livy Armstrong
Lord Leicester: Nick Ash
Lord Burleigh: John Gorick
Queen Elizabeth: Rebecca Mordan
Mortimer/Davison: David Newman
Mary Stuart: Lucinda Raikes
Hanna Kennedy: Lesley Stone
Sir Paulet/Lord Aubespine/Officer: Patrick Taggart
Director: Ryan McBride
Designer: Alexie Kharibian
Lighting: Anna Watson
Sound: Danny Searle
Music: Paul Walker
2005-02-12 23:41:10