Mary Stuart

by Friedrich Schiller adapted by Robert Icke

seen at the Almeida Theatre on 14 December 2016

This production is directed by Robert Ice with set and costume designs by Hildegard Bechtler. Juliet Stevenson and Lia Williams take the parts of Mary Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I of England, selecting which part to play in each performance on the toss of a coin. (On days with matinee performances, the matinee allocation is reversed for the evening performance). Vincent Franklin is Burleigh (Elizabeth's wily political adviser), John Light is Leicester (his emotional allegiance apparently torn between the two queens), and Rudi Dharmalingam is Mortimer (a convert to Catholicism and Mary's cause).

The play is not historically accurate - it famously includes a personal confrontation between Mary and Elizabeth which never took place - but it embodies serious political and philosophical themes in intensely powerful and bitterly opposed personalities. Can the agents of one state imprison the head of another state? Can the prisoner, a queen, be justly tried by a court which by definition cannot be 'of her peers'? How much is the sovereignty of a governing queen constrained by the wishes of her people and her councillors? How do the courtiers survive the minefield of their queen's imperious will? All this and more is on display here.

In the performance I saw, Juliet Stevenson played Mary and Lia Williams played Elizabeth. But the production clearly emphasises the parallels between the two women, who appear at first identically dressed in black trouser suits with white shirts. Only when the coin is tossed does 'Mary' discard the black velvet jacket. Then we see her imprisoned at Fotheringay, her formidable energy directed towards self preservation as she tries to determine what is going on around her, and to exert what influence she can at a personal level to ensure that her appeals reach her cousin Elizabeth. Juliet Stevenson portrays both Mary's emotional volatility and her fierce intelligence with conviction, and shows also how these two qualities fatally undermine one another.

In the meantime, Elizabeth's position seems hardly less constrained. Though she can make her nervous courtiers sit or stand by the negligent click of her fingers, the various factions are constantly trying to force her hand on political issues, most pertinently on the question of her marriage and the even thornier problems of what to do about Mary. The court is, in its own way, a prison. Lia Williams, a slighter figure than Juliet Stevenson, nevertheless wields a dangerous authority as a shield to hide her personal insecurities. When the two queens meet, their personalities cannot fail to collide, and the result is disastrous, with Mary's intransigence arousing Elizabeth's cold fury. The situation is hardly helped by an attempt on Elizabeth's life as she leaves the precincts of Fotheringay.

All this is conveyed in a bare setting using the Almeida's rough brick curved back wall and a simple revolving set with three metal benches which can rise to be tables or sink to be level with the floor. Elizabeth's confinement is marked by the fact that she is entirely surrounded by men. Mary has some female attendants (though the spoken parts should probably be seen really as meant for men, particularly as one of them gives Mary her final sacrament, which it would have been impossible for a Catholic woman to have done, or for another to have received from her hands). As Mary prepares for her execution in an almost radiant access of serenity after her passionate outbursts, Elizabeth, having vented her wrath on the unfortunate underling who misread her deliberately ambiguous instructions concerning the writ of execution, is seen to be fatally trapped in the image of monarchy as she is dressed by her courtiers in an utterly confining hooped skirt, draped with jewels, and bedecked with one of the famous red wigs.

The power of the central performances, the menace and confusion amongst the courtiers, the simplicity of the design, and the impassioned articulacy of the text, all add up to a fine production.