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How entertaining? ★★★☆☆
Thought provoking? ★★★☆☆ 3 June 2013
This a theatre review of MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS GOT HER HEAD CHOPPED OFF. |
“Madam, I shall never be seduced by the silent song of toleration,” John Knox
The King’s Head Theatre is a nifty little venue in London’s Islington. However, it was not particularly well utilised in this staging of Liz Lochhead’s 1987 play. In my section, the seats were not raked, and there was grumbling among my neighbours about visibility before proceedings commenced. Fortunately three things occurred: The players mostly stood, they performed with gusto, and post-interval a re-seating was strategically carried out. The production design choice, of having the performance area strewn with leaves and dirt, suggested the outdoors or unkempt halls and rooms. Maybe they were going for a sort of realism as to the state of the nations of Scotland and England in the sixteenth century?
The King’s Head Theatre is a nifty little venue in London’s Islington. However, it was not particularly well utilised in this staging of Liz Lochhead’s 1987 play. In my section, the seats were not raked, and there was grumbling among my neighbours about visibility before proceedings commenced. Fortunately three things occurred: The players mostly stood, they performed with gusto, and post-interval a re-seating was strategically carried out. The production design choice, of having the performance area strewn with leaves and dirt, suggested the outdoors or unkempt halls and rooms. Maybe they were going for a sort of realism as to the state of the nations of Scotland and England in the sixteenth century?
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A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE is doing gangbusters for booksellers, and its award-winning adaptation into GAME OF THRONES on the small screen, have primed audiences for dynastic brinkmanship. Politicking at the highest levels, where death and torture are at stake, not merely getting a slap on the wrist from a parliamentary select committee, has positioned itself to be a conscious choice of popular entertainment. MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS GOT HER HEAD CHOPPED OFF is a timely re-addition. (Along with the Scottish independence referendum.) Just seven actors, portraying multiple parts, are in front of us to convince of two queens on one island playing a grand game of chess. They are besieged by misogyny and bigotry.
The standout from the ensemble is Nora Wardell playing Mary. Her accent, mixing Scottish and French (due to the Queen of Scotland raised for many years in France), is particularly impressive. Wardell swaps to playing Queen Elizabeth’s lady in waiting Marion, and vice-versa, Sarah Thom moves between the Queen of England and Mary’s lady in waiting Bessie. A neat little flip of their flowing skirts, from the colourfully ornate to modest grey, and back, represent the minimalism offered to roleplaying shifts. The costumes are enjoyably playful, one minute anachronistic polo tops, then the next jeans converted into breeches and jackets to doublets. The modernist dress alluding to women in general, and women in power in particular, not being emancipated in 450 years as much as we’d like to think. The battleground in MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS GOT HER HEAD CHOPPED OFF is whom they should, and want, to marry.
Ambitious then, but what lets the side down is the unintelligibility of the dialogue, even with a narrator helping to contextualise. The brogues are thick and the vocabulary slang heavy. Too many sections breeze by in a quizzical whirl. The lack of familiarity with the vernacular is of course my fault, but the actors must take some of the blame, as the accents springing from lips don’t feel natural or consistently articulate.
Having said that, rivalry and positioning, and a fascinating choice of allegorical ending, mean this play should be engaged with.
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