Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh
Three stars
What sets Liz Lochhead's
1987 play apart is the way past and present rub up against each other,
setting off sparks of recognition as text-book history clashes with
modern-day topicality. You hear it in the language: "cauldron o' lye"
one line, Princes Street the next. You see it in the dressing-up box
costumes, the frocks as much 1950s prom as 16th-century regal. And you
understand it in a story that makes the link between coin contemporary Scottish sectarianism and the power politics of the French Catholic Mary and the English Protestant Elizabeth, the virgin queen.
Director Tony Cownie's Lyceum/Dundee Rep
co-production is duly anachronistic. Neil Murray's set is a decidedly
un-period jumble: a phone box, a rusting car, a skip with a crucifix and
a hospital screen to shield us from Mary's beheading. The scavenging
eclecticism of the language is done justice by Ann Louise Ross as the
Corbie, a crow-like narrator, and Liam Brennan as the hot-headed
reformer John Knox.
But for all the cultural collisions of the story, there is nothing abrasive about Shauna Macdonald's Mary or Emily Winter's Elizabeth. They give merely pleasant performances when they should be larger than life. A flame-haired Macdonald, whose dialogue is hampered by an unconvincing French accent, seems less queen than little girl lost. Likewise, Winter is glamorous and self-regarding but not grand. Their modesty means there is too little at stake at the heart of the evening and too little urgency to drive it home.
And what the production doesn't muster – at least, not until the playground sequence at the end – is the sense of a company coming together to tell a story with a single voice. This is a show of moments – a nice performance here, a jarring explosion there – but not of a unified ensemble spirit.
But for all the cultural collisions of the story, there is nothing abrasive about Shauna Macdonald's Mary or Emily Winter's Elizabeth. They give merely pleasant performances when they should be larger than life. A flame-haired Macdonald, whose dialogue is hampered by an unconvincing French accent, seems less queen than little girl lost. Likewise, Winter is glamorous and self-regarding but not grand. Their modesty means there is too little at stake at the heart of the evening and too little urgency to drive it home.
And what the production doesn't muster – at least, not until the playground sequence at the end – is the sense of a company coming together to tell a story with a single voice. This is a show of moments – a nice performance here, a jarring explosion there – but not of a unified ensemble spirit.
© Mark Fisher 2011
More coverage at theatreSCOTLAND.com
Sign up for theatreSCOTLAND updates
Sign up for theatreSCOTLAND discussion
No comments:
Post a Comment