Queen Anne

by Helen Edmundson

seen at the Theatre Royal Haymarket on 8 August 2017

Natalie Abrahami directs Emma Cunniffe as Queen Anne and Romola Garai as Sarah Churchill in this new RSC production transferred from Stratford. It follows the difficult relationship between the two women from the last years of William III's reign (when Anne was heir to the throne) until about 1708 soon after the death of her husband Prince George of Denmark. When Anne becomes Queen, England is soon involved in a European War, while domestically the Queen sees the 1707 Act of Union between England and Scotland as a personal triumph.

Anne, insecure and ill-educated, is seen by many as biddable and stupid, but she has a clear sense of her own entitlement and her duty, even as those around her try to manipulate her for their own political advantage. Her ambitious friend from their youth, Sarah Jennings, has married the brilliant soldier John Churchill - Earl, eventually to be Duke, of Marlborough - and her own driving ambitions conjoined with his make her dangerously impatient with the dynamics of being the special friend of a woman she has come to despise, but who is nonetheless the monarch.

Thomas Tallis

by Jessica Swale

seen at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse on 7 November 2015

The play, directed by Adele Thomas and designed by Hannah Clark with Harry Christophers providing musical expertise, features Brendan O'Hea as Thomas Tallis, with Simon Harrison and Katy Stephens taking various parts and Guy Amos as King Edward VI, and with six singers from The Sixteen.

In the gorgeous atmosphere of the candle-lit playhouse the music of the great Tudor composer Thomas Tallis could hardly fail to charm, and indeed as the play opens with Tallis himself speaking to us about the roughness of human speech being transformed into song we await the first sounds of polyphony with eager expectation. We are not disappointed, as the sounds emerge from behind the doors, and then the six singers appear - immaculately attired in modern evening dress. 

The Oresteia

by Aeschylus adapted by Rory Mullarkey

seen at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre on 1 October 2015

The second major production of the Oresteia in London this year is directed by Adele Thomas and designed by Hannah Clark, with George Irving as Agamemnon, Katy Stephens as Clytemnestra, Joel MacCormack as Orestes and Rosie Hilal as Electra, and also Naana Agyei-Ampadu as Cassandra, Dennis Herdman as the Herald, Branka Katic as Athena, Trevor Fox as Aegisthus and Petra Massey as Cilissa (Orestes' nurse).

Merely providing a more extensive cast list shows that the style of this version is quite different from that produced at the Almeida Theatre. It is more clearly 'faithful' to the original trilogy by Aeschylus, in that the three parts presented to us are clearly 'Agamemnon',  'Choephori' and 'Eumenides', and the secondary group of characters therefore has more immediate impact. The story of Iphigenia is related by the chorus near the beginning of 'Agamemnon' but not explicitly dramatised, and this certainly redresses the balance of the opening play.