Theatre Royal, Haymarket – until 30 September 2017. Reviewed by Andrew and Sharon Kennedy
Those with an interest in English history will revel in the light shed on Queen Anne’s reign at the Theatre Royal Haymarket.
A neurotic, stunted Queen unhappily prowls the stage. In an era when life was precarious and an English monarch’s tenure on the throne most uncertain, Emma Cunniffe depicts Anne admirably struggling with rivalry at court and beyond.
England’s cantankerously close relationship with Europe looms large. The Queen asks in panic at one point if the Union with Scotland was not settled. Preceeded by a cousin: a Dutch usurper she loathes; and threatened by a catholic half brother in France, she is increasingly resigned to a German protestant successor as her seventeen children and heirs are stillborn or predecease her. The satirists engagingly mock her Danish consort’s valiant attempts to sire her successor.
Where should a beleagured Queen turn for solace? Not it seems to Romola Garai’s glamorous childhood crush that is Sarah Churchill. While stringing her Majesty along, her ambition and glamour wed her to the country’s greatest general. While in favour, the golden couple receive lands and build a palace that dwarfs the Queen’s country retreat in Kensington. Hubris leads them to believe they can wind her Majesty round their little fingers, but ultimately it checks their advance.
The pain the Queen lives with, both physical and emotional, are etched in Emma Cunniffe’s face and body. She conveys well the Queen’s struggles in her stooped, awkward gait with swollen pus ridden legs.
The satire continues, with Swift and Defoe, showing no mercy in amusing but harsh vignettes which periodically lighten and interrupt the historical narrative.
The seemingly endless war with France helps challenge Queen and country’s resources. The Queen in alarm asks how the country will make up the 20,000 killed in battle. The answer it seems is European auxiliaries paid for by English taxpayers with the Duke of Marlborough getting backhanders from his ‘foreign’ allies. After all how is the poor soul to furnish Blenheim on a general’s salary!
Twelve years seem such a short reign but this play shows how much goes on to tax a monarch on many fronts.
Most enlightening!