Reviews 2007
Reviews 2007
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by Friedrich Schiller, directed by Joseph Ziegler
Soulpepper Theatre Company, Young Centre, Toronto
September 12-October 13, 2007
After a show trial a political leader is imprisoned indefinitely for planning the overthrow of the government and inciting zealous co-religionists to violent actions. This is a not modern terrorist leader, but Mary, Queen of Scots (1542-87) as right-wingers in the court of Elizabeth I view her in Friedrich Schiller’s Mary Stuart. Schiller may have written the play in 1800, but his insights into the insidious mingling of personal and political in historical events remains startlingly relevant. Add to this a scathing portrayal of male inability to adjust to power held in female hands and Schiller’s world-view seems even more modern.
Soulpepper launched itself with Schiller’s Don Carlos back in 1998, in one stroke revealing an exciting new theatre company and compelling production of a famous play. This Mary Stuart does not have electricity of that Don Carlos. Peter Oswald’s adaptation flits between purple passages and contemporary mundanities while seldom capturing the nobility of Schiller’s verse. Christina Podubbiuk’s design places the women in period costume and the men in period to modern dress with no obvious purpose to this differential time-coding.
Nevertheless, the play is borne up by two magnificent performances. Yanna McIntosh is absolutely radiant as Mary, a woman who changes before our eyes from a worldly to an otherworldly presence. Intensity of emotion and clarity of intelligence shine through in her every word and gesture. In turn, Nancy Palk gradually reveals Elizabeth the human being beneath the multiple layers of poses of her own and others’ devising. The essential but unhistorical meeting Schiller gives the rival queens is shattering. In supporting roles William Webster is suitably haughty as Elizabeth’s harshest counselor Burleigh while Oliver Dennis as the milder Shrewsbury grows in stature as a voice of reason and conscience. Both David Storch as Mortimer and Stuart Hughes as Leicester use a modern offhand style of delivery that clashes with their roles and circumstances. Mortimer should, in any case, be played by someone younger and better able to communicate misguided youthful enthusiasm without seeming comical. Despite this, the chance to see one of the great works of European drama illuminated by two such extraordinary performances as those of McIntosh and Palk is one no one should miss.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2007-09-14.
Photo: Nancy Palk and Yanna McIntosh.
2007-09-14
Mary Stuart