REVIEW: THREE QUEENS by Rosamund Gravelle at Barons Court Theatre 23 April – 11 May 2024

‘brisk, literate, beautifully staged, perfectly performed play' ★★★★

Sometimes you wonder what it is that makes people want to be monarch. Look at Richard III, say – 30 years of decent enough life as a Duke, lots of land, plenty of money, then just over two years as King, every month of them spent fighting to hold on to the throne rather than achieving very much. Or, as Shakespeare’s version of Richard II, would have it, all Kings deposed, slain, haunted by the ghosts of those they deposed, poisoned by their wives – all murdered. Anyhow, let’s sit upon a theatre seat and watch sad stories of the death of Queens – in this case Lady Jane Grey, she of the nine days in 1553, executed by her successor Queen Mary who would herself be dead about four years later and succeeded by her sister Elizabeth.

Rosamund Gravelle’s brisk, literate, beautifully staged, perfectly performed play posits a final night for Lady Jane (Martha Crow) while Mary, Elizabeth and the Eminence Rouge Cardinal Reginald Pole try to cajole, tempt or persuade her to recant her Protestantism to save her life, if not, as Lady Jane believes, her soul. There are stylistic echoes here of Schiller’s imagined meeting between Elizabeth of England and Mary Queen of Scots before another execution of a dangerous rival.

The dark cavern at the basement of the Barons Court Theatre provides a perfect setting for the play – broodingly claustrophobic, an effect perfectly added to by a stage-smoky opening of Tudor song and Elizabeth (Eliza Shea) revealed playing chess (of course, the game where the Queen’s are all-powerful) with her lover Sir Robert Dudley (Sushant Shekhar).

Elizabeth and Cardinal Pole, played by Les Kenny-Green, are the subtle politicians, manoeuvring for position and their own safety, Dudley a man-on-the-make who will convert to Catholicism at the drop of his feathered hat since Mary has restored the old faith and the priests to England after the death of her father, Henry VIII and brother Edward VI.

No such moral flexibility for Queen Mary (Becky Black) and Lady Jane, however – the staunch Catholic facing the young usurper who briefly held her throne for Protestantism and, even with the headman’s axe above her head holds to her faith, her God. Both actors excel in the play’s key scene – the ultimate showdown between them as Mary seeks a way to spare her rival’s life without risk to herself while Jane is tempted to bolt for life but, a Woman for All Seasons, chooses conscience. It can be hard for the modern mind fully to comprehend the kind of faith that would embrace such a death (hard enough even then: a bare 40 years or so later the Huguenot Henri de Navarre would think Paris, and the French crown, ‘worth a Mass’.)

Lavishly costumed, the production makes remarkable use of a tiny playing area that comfortably contains a sizeable cast and is filled for much of the running time with impressive trays of Catholic votive candles. The choreography’s perfect, the pacing ideal.

As can be the case with historical drama, the story itself, gripping as it is, perhaps obscures any theme beyond the bravery of its heroine. But it’s a story very well and elegantly told, particularly in not foregrounding Elizabeth too strongly, the ultimate winner, but here a more watchful presence, reading the room, keeping herself safe at a time when the stakes couldn’t be higher, and indeed something someone less royal would be burned against.

THREE QUEENS by Rosamund Gravelle at Barons Court Theatre 23 April – 11 May 2024

Director: Sharon Willems

Box Office: https://www.baronscourttheatre.com/threequeensrosamundgravelle

Cast:

Becky Black - Mary I

Martha Crow - Lady Jane Grey

Eliza Shea- Elizabeth I

Les Kenny-Green - Reginald Pope

Sally Sharp - Kat Ashley

Sushant Shekhar - Sir Robert Dudley

Creatives

Directed by Sharon Willems

Music by Dimitri Kennaway

Lighting design by Leo Bacica

Produced by Kibo Productions & Rosamund Gravelle

Reviewer: David Weir’s plays include Confessional (Oran Mor, Glasgow), Better Together (Jack Studio, London). Those and others performed across Scotland, Wales and England, and in Australia, Canada, South Korea, Switzerland and Belgium. Awards include Write Now Festival prize, Constance Cox award, SCDA best depiction of Scottish life, and twice Bruntwood longlisted.