“Munro gives the actors plenty to chew on, and with actors like Henshall, Morison and Vernel, it’s a pleasure to watch and listen”
Mary is another play in the series of dramas about Scottish history by Rona Munro. They focus on the Stuart dynasty of the kings of Scotland, and begin with James I. These earlier plays, known collectively as The James Plays, were seen both on tour in Scotland, and at the English National Theatre in 2014, to well deserved acclaim. They provide the backstory for Mary, the current play in the series, but all the plays are meant to seen as stand alone dramas as well. This production of Mary, directed by Roxana Silbert, has a strong cast in Douglas Henshall as the Catholic Sir James Melville, Rona Morison as Agnes, a fiercely Knoxian brand of Protestant, and Brian Vernel as a politically naive guard named Thompson. Mary Stuart herself makes a couple of brief, but memorable appearances (a poised debut by newcomer Meg Watson). The austere lines of the set and costume designs (Ashley Martin-Davis), and the vivid lighting (Matt Haskins) are an appropriate contrast to the catastrophic events that lie at the heart of the reimagined events of Rona Munro’s play.
Mary is of course, about Mary, Queen of Scots, that well known, tragic figure of any number of romantic novels and movies about the Scottish queen and her rival, Elizabeth I of England. Munro’s version of Mary’s story doesn’t focus on the rivalry between queens, as Schiller’s does. In Munro’s hands, Mary Stuart’s story is altogether a much grittier, and more violent drama. It’s about the tragedy of a woman caught up in a vicious power struggle between warring factions at the Scottish court. The battle is literally fought on Mary’s body. Interestingly, Munro chooses to tell this story not through Mary’s voice, but through the voices of some minor characters at her court.
Munro’s drama opens the way it means to go on — on a scene of violence. A man lies on stage, bloody from a stab wound. Melville, the Queen’s devoted supporter, is trying to get him and his blood, out of the way before Mary sees him. Because “she’s been frightened enough already.” But Thompson wants the Queen to see what “he” has done to him. Melville calls in a servant, Agnes, to clean him up. It turns out that “he” is James Bothwell, suspected assassin of the Queen’s husband, Henry Darnley. Bothwell is in the middle of a rampage. Over the course of a few months, he will leave no one in Scotland untouched by his rapaciousness for blood and power. One of Bothwell’s most potent weapons is sexual assault. And as Mary proceeds, Melville is forced to confront his complicity in standing by while Bothwell rapes his Queen. He is also forced to make an impossible choice between his loyalty to Mary, and his loyalty to his country. In these tumultuous times, there is no distinction between the “body politic” and the Queen’s actual body. In seizing the Queen, Bothwell has seized power. It doesn’t seem to matter whether people believe Mary was raped or was a willing partner with Bothwell. Everything comes crashing down.
As a play, Mary works its magic with a mix of punchy and oddly modern dialogue, and genuinely heartfelt moments between the well-defined characters. Munro gives the actors plenty to chew on, and with actors like Henshall, Morison and Vernel, it’s a pleasure to watch and listen. The distinctive rhythms of the Scottish dialect heighten the emotions as these three struggle for power. But for all the drama of Melville’s anguished conscience, Mary ends on a cliffhanger. It feels like part of a series, and not a true standalone drama. Mary is really the Sir James Melville story. Maybe Munro will find time to write another play about Mary, Queen of Scots.
Mary may feel like a bit of an anomaly in The James Plays saga, but it fills in some essential details. If you’re a fan of the series, then you’ll want to see this play. So don’t miss Mary at the Hampstead, and start looking ahead to the next play in Rona Munro’s exceptional series about Scottish history, told from a Scottish perspective.
“cleverly creeps under our skin as a piece of theatre and leaves us with a lot to contemplate”
A woman breaks into her parents’ home to steal money for drugs; a prisoner sees every object as a possible way of killing herself; a sex worker waits in the cold for an extra ten pounds…
For forty years, Clean Break has been changing the future of women during and after their time in prison by both providing an outlet to challenge their misrepresentation in popular entertainment and as a formative process for learning, expression and evolution. Alice Birch’s commission to celebrate this gives carte blanche from a selection of 100 scenes – any number, any order – which address the manifold causes, processes and effects of being caught up in the criminal justice system. By the very nature of the crimes women commit, locking them away is less a safety measure for the rest of society than distancing them from their own threats with devastating repercussions for them, those they depend on and who depend on them. Director, Maria Aberg, has carefully chosen and arranged her selection to touch on lives blighted by a structure which does not confront these complex pastoral issues.
With a brilliant choice of cast, the scope for illustrating the breadth of age, race and class of these women works well visually as well as within the script. Rosie Elnile’s versatile set of raised, individual box rooms around a central space forms different levels of impact for the audience, from the feeling of observed, intimate conversations of abusive relationships and foster care to being drawn into the group spirit of prison life. Some scenes work better than others, however, which produces a somewhat uneven flow. After fragments of emotional experiences at home and in prison, of mothers, daughters, prisoners and staff, the action’s centrepiece (and scene number 100) is a dinner party of old friends. Here Birch brings together all the elements of the good-doing, professional society, patting each other on the back and having another glass of wine. The overlapping conversation between the guests is superb, hypocrisy slowly smouldering as their personalities unfold (the detective, the documentary maker, the therapist, the charity volunteers…) until the one outsider, played by Shona Babayemi, in a passionate outburst, can stand the insincerity no longer.
There are strong performances all round, though our natural expectations for an imposed narrative makes it difficult to completely engage with the characters. Thusitha Jayasundera shows us the painful impotence of a mother who is told her daughter has committed suicide in prison and we feel the confused heartbreak of Joanna Horton as the mother who sees no option for her children but to kill them. In a truly sobering moment, Lucy Edkins and Kate O’Flynn’s quietly powerful final scene as mother and daughter sums up the tragic personal loss of the ignored. Despite the dark and distressing subject, the writing, acting and direction balances sadness with humour. ‘Blank’ cleverly creeps under our skin as a piece of theatre and leaves us with a lot to contemplate.
