MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS
Edinburgh International Festival
★★★★★
“a work of rare ambition: visually striking, musically daring, dramatically urgent”
Scottish Ballet’s Mary, Queen of Scots opens with Elizabeth I illuminated in a pool of light as white petals fall — winter, the end of a life. On her deathbed, she recalls her cousin and rival, Mary. From the first image, this is a dance of power, rivalry, and survival.
Directors Sophie Laplane and James Bonas construct a narrative without words, weaving gesture, image, and movement into a tapestry of grief, betrayal, and destiny. Their choreography blends lyrical pointe work with physical, almost sculptural, contemporary movement. A simple set of shifting white walls, designed by Soutra Gilmour, traps and releases the dancers, creating psychological intensity one moment and expansive space the next.
The production is rich in visual symbolism. Cabinets of curiosities act as both hiding places and portals; walls rise and fall like barriers of state; shadows transform dancers into spiders weaving the webs of their lives. Anouar Brissel’s projections are beautifully mapped across surfaces, while Bonnie Beecher’s lighting design is poetic and inventive, carving images of power and fragility. Costumes, too, flow seamlessly with the dancers’ movement — never ornamental, always integral.
Laplane and Bonas’s sense of dramatic storytelling ensures the work never drifts into abstraction. They create tension between characters, then expand it into group action charged with psychological weight. Themes of duality echo throughout: two queens, two crowns, black and white, snow and feathers, mother and son, past and future. A striking black-and-white pas de deux. Nothing is ever simple. Darnley and Rizzio dance a brotherly duet that evolves into a bro-mantic, then passionate, encounter. Boys being “boys” — choices that lead to tragic ends.
The company dances with precision and unity, moving like a murmuration of starlings — fluid, synchronised, yet alive with individuality. The seriousness of the subject never excludes joy. Bursts of Scottish identity punctuate the movement: a Highland fling erupts into the pointe work, playful steps lighten sombre passages, and even a regal walk becomes a witty parallel stroll en pointe or a bourrée on the knees while walking a wheeled dog. These touches bring levity without breaking the intensity.
The score, composed by Michael P. Atkinson and Mikael Karlsson, is itself a pas de deux. Classical and traditional styles collide with contemporary soundscapes, reflecting the complex interplay between history and the present. Conducted by Martin Yates and played with clarity and power, the music gives the production its heartbeat.
Mary, Queen of Scots, succeeds not just as a retelling of history but as a work of metaphor and resonance. It conveys the inexpressible: the loneliness of power, the fragility of legacy, the impossibility of reconciling opposites. Black and white never blend into grey; they remain in stark, unresolved tension.
By the close, many threads are drawn together with impressive coherence. Elizabeth looks back on her life, while James — the future king — steps forward into his reign. It is an ending that is both inevitable and moving.
Scottish Ballet has created a work of rare ambition: visually striking, musically daring, dramatically urgent. Mary, Queen of Scots, balances symbolism with storytelling, history with humanity. It is dance-theatre of the highest order — and a triumph.
MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS
Edinburgh International Festival
Reviewed on 16th August 2025 at Festival Theatre
by Louis Kavouras
Photography by Andy Ross
