Theatre Preview: Mary Stuart, Maidment Theatre

Robyn Malcolm as Mary Stuart. Photo / Supplied

As the formidable Cheryl West and the equally redoubtable Ngaire Munroe on TV's Outrageous Fortune, actors Robyn Malcolm and Elizabeth Hawthorne did not share much screen time.

When their characters crossed paths, terse greetings, barbed retorts and sideways glares were typical. But off set, the women clearly get on a lot better than their fictional alter egos.

Just ask them about their latest project and they're finishing one another's sentences, joking about their respective characters' foibles and getting into deep discussions on subjects as wide-ranging as psychoanalysis and modern terrorism.

In-sync they may be, but they're still not playing nice. They're portraying the leading figureheads in one of history's most deadly family feuds: Malcolm is Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, and Hawthorne is Queen Elizabeth I in German playwright Friedrich Schiller's Mary Stuart.

Writing in 1800, Schiller highlighted the Machiavellian ways the queens and their often duplicitous male courtiers employed to jostle for power and position. The play was newly translated in the early 2000s by British writer Peter Oswald who further emphasised its political themes.

The Auckland Theatre Company says Oswald's version ensures the women's controversial lives remain "brilliantly vivid" and the play, rather than an obscure history lesson, is a pacy and contemporary feeling commentary on the nature of power.

Malcolm and Hawthorne have hit the history books to prepare and acknowledge they have become immersed in the Elizabethan world because it is "totally engaging".

"When I first read the play, it felt like a thriller," says Malcolm. "We all love a good history and we are always looking to history to illuminate the present."

Hawthorne says the intrigue the two women were part of makes modern political manoeuvring look "petty, pissy and ineffectual".

For those not overly familiar with the history - it was more than 400 years ago - the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots, was considered by many to be the true heir to the English Crown rather than her Protestant cousin, Elizabeth I.

Raised in France and married to the Dauphin Francis at age 15, Mary was widowed two years later in 1560 and returned to Scotland. A series of ill-advised and disastrous marriages and affairs followed; son James was born in 1566 and Mary, facing an uprising among her own people, fled to England, leaving her infant boy behind.

Perceiving her as a threat, Elizabeth had Mary arrested. After 19 years of captivity in various castles and manor houses, Mary was tried and sentenced to death for treason for her alleged involvement in plots to assassinate Elizabeth. She was beheaded on February 8, 1587, and by all accounts it was a predictably stark and dramatic departure from this world.

Mary was led to the executioner's block wearing a black cloak with a white veil over her head but when she reached the block, she dropped her cloak to reveal a bright red dress. It took three strokes of the executioner's axe to sever her head and legend has it that witnesses were terrified to see her headless body move - her little dog crawled out, having hidden in her clothes.

Her death created a public relations nightmare for Elizabeth. How could she reconcile her image as a kind and benevolent queen with that of a woman who would order the execution of a fellow queen - and one who happened to be her own cousin?

And given she and Mary never met, despite the latter's repeated requests, had she accorded Mary a fair hearing? In Mary Stuart, Schiller imagines the dramatic confrontation that might have occurred had the queens met.

He was far from the first to reflect on what might have happened if Elizabeth and Mary had met. Playwrights, poets and authors have used Elizabeth I and Mary as inspiration for centuries.

University of Auckland early modern drama specialist Dr Sophie Tomlinson, author of Women on Stage in Stuart Drama, says Elizabeth I and Mary are refashioned by changing generations to suit political concerns and ideas about women's social roles.

She says the biggest change in portrayals of Elizabeth has been from religious saviour to a romanticised and modernised heroine torn between duty and her feelings.

"More recent films romanticise her probably because in a secular world, the religious dimension of her life no longer has the resonance it once did. We struggle to understand the pivotal role of faith in her life so attention has turned to her emotional life."

If Elizabeth has been recast as more feminine and romantic, Mary has been completely rehabilitated. Originally painted as highly sexualised - and demonised because of it - she has gone from being seen as an enemy of the state to being portrayed as a warmer person than Elizabeth.

The revisionism started in the 17th century, fuelled partly by the distribution in England of so-called "secret histories" written in France about the two queens.

Tomlinson says nothing accelerated interest in dramatising the lives of Elizabeth I and Mary more than the reopening of public theatres after the Restoration in 1660 when Charles II reclaimed the English throne. For the first time, women were allowed to act professionally and writers gradually responded to the growing popularity of female theatrical pioneers by writing strong roles for them.

"It led to a genre known as 'she-tragedy', where the focus was on female suffering and the overcoming of various obstacles.

"Queenly roles were very popular and demonstrated the interest on the part of subjects in the lives of their monarchs."

Mary was an ideal tragic heroine for Romantic poets and writers and she developed a cult-like following. It was helped by a late 18th century preoccupation with gender and sharpening definitions of masculine and feminine traits.

Women were counselled to adopt a certain perceived feminine sensibility characterised by heightened displays of emotion. Crying, blushing and fainting were highly desirable.

Elizabeth might not have modelled the appropriate sensibility but Mary, supposedly the more emotional of the two, did. Fashionable women of the period had portraits painted dressed as the doomed queen and wore jewellery with her image on it.

But when England needed a feisty figurehead to steel its people through World Wars I and II, they turned to Elizabeth I for inspiration. In the 1937 film Fire Over England, she was portrayed as a decisive ruler capable of dispatching foreign foes.

Interest in Schiller's Mary Stuart has been strong since Oswald's revision. It has done the rounds in London, starting at the hip Donmar Warehouse theatre before transferring to the West End. It also played on Broadway, earning seven Tony Award nominations including Best Revival of a Play.

Given contemporary concerns about terrorism and the ways in which our leaders can manipulate public sentiment, it's hardly surprising the story of Elizabeth I and Mary is back.

Then again, Prince William and Kate Middleton's wedding has ensured the monarchy and the women who play parts within it are back in the spotlight.

Tomlinson says it fits with a renewed interest in the lives of medieval and early modern queens. Often heavily involved in cultural pursuits, they were patrons of the arts and while their husbands may have enjoyed many dalliances, they took seriously advice from their consorts.

While history may have relegated these women to footnotes in the lives of their husbands, they were sometimes powerful figures in their own right.

* Mary Stuart, directed by Colin McColl, also stars Stuart Devenie, Jono Kenyon, John Pheloung, Hera Dunleavy, George Henare, Andrew Grainger, Cameron Rhodes, David Aston, Edward Peni, Steven Chudley, Taofia Pelesasa and Alex Walker.

Performance

What: Mary Stuart

Where and when: Maidment Theatre, May 5-28