Elsewhere
Elsewhere
✭✭✭✭✭
by Friedrich Schiller, translated by Peter Oswald, directed by Phyllida Lloyd
Donmar Warehouse, July 20-September 4, 2005;
Apollo Theatre, October 19, 2005-January 14, 2006
I was lucky enough to see the final performance of Phyllida Lloyd’s highly acclaimed production of Friedrich Schiller’s MARY STUART at the Apollo Theatre. Although I’ve seen the play twice before – once at the Stratford Festival in Canada and once at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin – this version, in a pithy new translation by Peter Oswald, was the most thrilling I’ve encountered. Despite my previous knowledge, it had me hanging on every word.
Lloyd’s direction was swift and clear, cutting straight to the heart of every scene. Janet McTeer played Mary Stuart and Harriet Walter Elizabeth I in completely contrasting styles and both gave truly outstanding performances. McTeer expressed Mary’s vibrancy and love of life by delivering her lines as if they had just spontaneous occurred to her. Walter, in contrast, delivered her lines, even those in flirtation with Leicester as if every word were calculated for effect. In body language McTeer’s Mary was natural and expansive while Walter’s Elizabeth was artificial and restricted.
Anthony Ward’s costuming emphasized this giving Mary and open bodice and short sleeves while covering every inch of Elizabeth’s body culminating in a stiff white collar that seemed to signify the complete separation of mind from body that animated her person while ironically pointing to Mary’s fate. Both Mary and Elizabeth were clad in period costume, Elizabeth more like a Japanese princess than the historical Elizabeth, while all the men were in modern dress. This seemed to show that the two great women were both of their time and out of their time, dealing in the 16th century with problems of sex and its relation to power and politics that still exist today. It was a brilliant concept.
Paul Jesson as a sympathetic Shrewsbury, David Horovitch as an icy Lord Burleigh, Guy Henry as a slimy Leicester and Rory Kinnear as Mortimer, a religious fanatic whose promise of freedom for Mary seems more like a threat rounded out a superb cast. Lloyd’s notion of having the two queen’s climactic fictional meeting occur in a rainstorm was a brilliant stroke, linking Mary with the freedom of nature and Elizabeth with its instant cessation. It was a triumph for all concerned.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in the London Theatre Guide 2006-01-31.
Photo: Harriet Walter and Janet McTeer. ©2005 Tristram Kenton.
2006-01-31
London, GBR: Mary Stuart