Enthralling tale of forbidden love

HELEN Edmundson brought her important new play, Queen Anne, for its premiere at the wonderful Swan Theatre to an enraptured audience opening up as it does a window on a little recalled passage of British history.

Yet it was one that marked a seminal movement away from the principle of hereditary monarchy into our proudly valued constitutional democracy. And, my goodness, doesn’t it resonate too with the issues which dominate our modern world; a time riven by war, split by religious tension, a government divided by political factions, ruled by spin and dominated by a media that forms public opinion rather than reflects it, a country formed by the Union of Great Britain that so nearly ceased to exist just last year, sexual abuse and the growth of feminism.

Add in a dash of corruption in high public office and it’s all there played out against the back drop of private grief and forbidden love...

Queen Anne succeeded to the throne of England in 1702 with the country and its Protestant allies at war with the Catholic forces of France and Spain, her armies led by the Duke of Marlborough, whose wife Sarah Churchill had become the dominant force in the Royal Household, exerting a clear and well-known sexual hold over the affections of the new Queen.

Anne, herself, in the grip of poor health and the clear need to provide a royal heir had suffered her way through 17 mostly failed pregnancies or sickly children lost in their infancy.

Rather than deal with the conflict within Anne of her need to maintain and reciprocate her love for the Duchess with the demands of her royal duties, Natalie Abrahami’s direction concentrates more on Anne’s growing awareness of her own power to shape the direction of the country’s fortunes and to do so for the good of her people.

Her speech to the House of Lords upon her accession to the throne was particularly moving as, in her new regal robes, she dedicated her duty to the service of her people in a manner that reminded me of the accession speech of our current monarch. When, belatedly, she was told of the numbers of British soldiers killed at the battle of Blenheim, she demanded not just the numbers, but ‘bring me a list of their names’.

Here, Emma Cunniffe, in the role of Anne, charted well the development of the timorous, insecure princess into the determined, selfless Queen who was able chillingly to reject the final, doomed appeal of her former confidante.

Less assured, however, were the private scenes between Anne and Sarah Churchill, who was played with scheming hauteur by Natascha McElhone.

These were played without, to my mind, a true reflection of any sexual passion, unrequited or not, held by either character. In their most significant meeting, when Anne requests that Sarah gives her some solace with a loving embrace and a kiss, her advances are refused, with Sarah deigning only to kiss the Queen’s forehead and hand.

Here, there was no hint of a sexual ache of yearning from Anne, nor any clue from Sarah that she was using this withdrawal of sexual favour as part of a campaign to further her hold on the seat of royal power. In these scenes, too, the pace clearly dropped as too many of the pauses between them seemed to arise more from insecurity with their lines, rather than signifying an awareness of the changing relationship between them.

However, there were strengths elsewhere in the performance with musical scenes played out in the drinking and satirical clubs, enjoying the freedom of the Restoration Age to lampoon the public figures of the day, chiefly from the writers Jonathan Swift and Daniel Defoe.

These scenes acted both as Chorus and Comedy, with characters dressed as hideous caricatures of the pregnant queen and her horny consort, clearly based on Swift’s depiction of the ‘Yahoos’ from ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ and eerily prescient of our own modern day ‘Spitting Image’ puppets. The image of the puppet queen made to dance to the strings of the puppet duchess, (who in real life held the titles of Groom of the Stole, Mistress of the Robes and Keeper of the Privy Purse) is brilliantly depicted.

Elsewhere in the cast, Beth Park as Abigail Hill carried off her role well as a needy relation of the Duchess who becomes insinuated into the Royal Household; extending her influence over Anne, and seeing her star rise as Sarah’s declines with steely, yet upright determination.

Jonathan Broadbent, as Robert Harley, the Speaker of the House of Commons, leader of the anti-war Tory faction, and later to scheme his way upwards to the role of Lord Treasurer, played confidently and humorously his role as the arch-politician with his oft-repeated mantra; ‘yes..er…no…er…maybe’. And although Robert Cavanagh, as the Duke of Marlborough, lacked the charisma and supreme self-confidence of a glorious battlefield strategist, his final scene showing his grief over the loss of his son and his career (lying in ruins following charges of corruption) was tragically moving.

Natascha McElhone’s final scene, too, showed her acting skills at their best as she proudly and defiantly spat out her declaration that she alone could claim to have been ‘the most powerful woman in the land’. This, however, was undermined in a most effective piece of direction by the appearance of a ghostly, but ultimately triumphant, Queen Anne hovering at her shoulder.

At the end, after loud and sustained applause from an appreciative audience, the lady sitting next to me turned to her partner and whispered ‘that’s the trouble with these history plays, they always leave me wanting to read more about the period’. Well, that says much for the success of this play.

Overall - to my mind, a performance of ‘yes…no…maybe’ but an enthralling evening none the less.

Queen Anne runs in repertory with Congreve’s Restoration Comedy Love For Love at The Swan throughout this month and January (until 23rd); telephone Box Office 01789 403492 or visit www.rsc.org.uk

BILL BOWEN