Tudor-Stuart Intrigue at the Distillery District: A Review of Soulpepper's Mary Stuart
(Published in The Strand's Oct. 4th issue)
"Remember, gentlemen, the Theatre of History is wider than the Realm of England."
So spoke Mary, Queen of Scots, during her infamous kangaroo trial on English soil. And she could not have latched onto truer or more prophetic words. They have borne real fruit as her story finds new life in the countless revisitations of that same artistic soil, endlessly tilled for inspiration.
Schiller's drama is yet another retelling and reimagining of the imprisonment and execution of Mary Stuart. His play is set mere days before her death, but in Schiller's version, theatre did what history never managed (so much so that anachronism should be recoined schillerism). It manipulated those two giants onto the same stage, the same space, for a confrontation where the personal and political blur, culminating in a showdown between two historical titans, a catfight of royal proportions that erupts with historical consequence. We receive a crash course in Elizabethan realpolitik and political spin, and witness court intrigues, Machiavellian machinations, and the human agonies behind a public drama.
All of this plays out on an intimate-but-Spartan stage, which firmly clings to a minimalist aesthetic with its dreary brown walls and simple chairs for both Mary's prison and Elizabeth's not-quite-palatial abode, an intentional resemblance meant to draw parallels between the two seemingly opposite women. The set only really fails when no attempt is made to evoke an outdoorsy feel for the crucial confrontation scene in the park (the only outdoors scene in the entire play), and we are instead met at every turn by the same drab backdrop.
Mary Stuart, unsurprisingly, revolves around the plotting of Mary's death: how to achieve it, but more importantly, how to avoid blame for it. It is a study in contrasts: Freudian poster child (the older virginal and Protestant Elizabeth) versus "Drink milk, love life" slogan girl (the younger, sensual, and Catholic Mary). But what the play is not so obviously about is how the two women are inextricably bound in their loneliness and estrangement. Though they may be rival queens and rivals for one man's affections (another Schillerism), both are prisoners. While Mary's bonds are of the literal kind, Elizabeth's entomb her beneath a fortress-like demeanour as a barricade against a court and world overflowing with testosterone. Elizabeth employs virtue as a political necessity to keep her throne, and evades moral responsibility by dancing around ambiguity. Mary, on the other hand, has indulged, rarely denying herself life's pleasures.
Yanna McIntosh (Mary) and Nancy Palk (Elizabeth) soar in this production of Mary Stuart. While they may share the stage with the men, the two queens decidedly lord over the males in this production, their acting prowess equal to the formidable characters they inhabit.
Palk gets underneath the skin of Elizabeth, the monarch, to show us the trappings of human frailty that prey on even the most powerful rulers. And McIntosh gives an entrancing portrait of Mary's many sides - her clarity, barely concealed pride, zest, and finally her grace in the face of death. By contrast, the males (with the exception of Oliver Dennis as Shrewsbury and Webster as Burleigh), dwell in mediocrity.
Stuart Hughes (Earl of Leicester) and David Storch (Mortimer) never especially manage to fully inhabit their roles or capture the expressions unique to the period. They remain awkwardly modern in their inflections and body language.
The costumes certainly don't help. The men are dressed in modern business suits, some with ties, and some with ruffled period collars, while the women are attired in Elizabethan gowns. It's like watching your professor lecture while dressed as a 16th century minstrel: distracting to say the least.
The point may have been to put in relief the women's isolation in a world of men, but the play strains too hard to achieve something that should be accomplished through acting alone. Indeed, Hughes' Leicester looks like an Apprentice castoff and Storch is a little too old to play such a youthful idealist and hothead. He ends up violating Mary in his zeal to free her in the name of Catholicism and the pope. But perhaps the worst sins were committed by the French ambassadors who came off more like con artists, stealing into the court.
Costumes aside, praise for Soulpepper's Mary Stuart hinges on the impassioned portrayal of the Tudor and Stuart matriarchs. There, the production succeeds tremendously; Yvanna McIntosh resurrects a Mary who ascends to the scaffold with the regal dignity of a martyr and queen, while Nancy Palk leaves us with a stirring image of Elizabeth's pyrrhic triumph to retain her head and throne.
Be sure to catch Mary Stuart which runs until October 13th, 2007.
"Remember, gentlemen, the Theatre of History is wider than the Realm of England."
So spoke Mary, Queen of Scots, during her infamous kangaroo trial on English soil. And she could not have latched onto truer or more prophetic words. They have borne real fruit as her story finds new life in the countless revisitations of that same artistic soil, endlessly tilled for inspiration.
Schiller's drama is yet another retelling and reimagining of the imprisonment and execution of Mary Stuart. His play is set mere days before her death, but in Schiller's version, theatre did what history never managed (so much so that anachronism should be recoined schillerism). It manipulated those two giants onto the same stage, the same space, for a confrontation where the personal and political blur, culminating in a showdown between two historical titans, a catfight of royal proportions that erupts with historical consequence. We receive a crash course in Elizabethan realpolitik and political spin, and witness court intrigues, Machiavellian machinations, and the human agonies behind a public drama.
All of this plays out on an intimate-but-Spartan stage, which firmly clings to a minimalist aesthetic with its dreary brown walls and simple chairs for both Mary's prison and Elizabeth's not-quite-palatial abode, an intentional resemblance meant to draw parallels between the two seemingly opposite women. The set only really fails when no attempt is made to evoke an outdoorsy feel for the crucial confrontation scene in the park (the only outdoors scene in the entire play), and we are instead met at every turn by the same drab backdrop.
Mary Stuart, unsurprisingly, revolves around the plotting of Mary's death: how to achieve it, but more importantly, how to avoid blame for it. It is a study in contrasts: Freudian poster child (the older virginal and Protestant Elizabeth) versus "Drink milk, love life" slogan girl (the younger, sensual, and Catholic Mary). But what the play is not so obviously about is how the two women are inextricably bound in their loneliness and estrangement. Though they may be rival queens and rivals for one man's affections (another Schillerism), both are prisoners. While Mary's bonds are of the literal kind, Elizabeth's entomb her beneath a fortress-like demeanour as a barricade against a court and world overflowing with testosterone. Elizabeth employs virtue as a political necessity to keep her throne, and evades moral responsibility by dancing around ambiguity. Mary, on the other hand, has indulged, rarely denying herself life's pleasures.
Yanna McIntosh (Mary) and Nancy Palk (Elizabeth) soar in this production of Mary Stuart. While they may share the stage with the men, the two queens decidedly lord over the males in this production, their acting prowess equal to the formidable characters they inhabit.
Palk gets underneath the skin of Elizabeth, the monarch, to show us the trappings of human frailty that prey on even the most powerful rulers. And McIntosh gives an entrancing portrait of Mary's many sides - her clarity, barely concealed pride, zest, and finally her grace in the face of death. By contrast, the males (with the exception of Oliver Dennis as Shrewsbury and Webster as Burleigh), dwell in mediocrity.
Stuart Hughes (Earl of Leicester) and David Storch (Mortimer) never especially manage to fully inhabit their roles or capture the expressions unique to the period. They remain awkwardly modern in their inflections and body language.
The costumes certainly don't help. The men are dressed in modern business suits, some with ties, and some with ruffled period collars, while the women are attired in Elizabethan gowns. It's like watching your professor lecture while dressed as a 16th century minstrel: distracting to say the least.
The point may have been to put in relief the women's isolation in a world of men, but the play strains too hard to achieve something that should be accomplished through acting alone. Indeed, Hughes' Leicester looks like an Apprentice castoff and Storch is a little too old to play such a youthful idealist and hothead. He ends up violating Mary in his zeal to free her in the name of Catholicism and the pope. But perhaps the worst sins were committed by the French ambassadors who came off more like con artists, stealing into the court.
Costumes aside, praise for Soulpepper's Mary Stuart hinges on the impassioned portrayal of the Tudor and Stuart matriarchs. There, the production succeeds tremendously; Yvanna McIntosh resurrects a Mary who ascends to the scaffold with the regal dignity of a martyr and queen, while Nancy Palk leaves us with a stirring image of Elizabeth's pyrrhic triumph to retain her head and throne.
Be sure to catch Mary Stuart which runs until October 13th, 2007.
