Transformations That Are "MOST Remarkable"

As a devoted fan of Helen Mirren's Academy-Award winning performance in the 2006 film The Queen, I was immediately attracted to the idea of attending the National Theatre's cinema telecast of the new play, The Audience -- which features the same woman (Mirren) playing the same woman (Queen Elizabeth II) in a script by the same author (Peter Morgan).

Logically, then, I suppose I was expecting it to be "more of the same".  See how wrong you can be?  In fact, I have now read that Mirren was very worried about that possibility until she read the script.

The film was a cross between biopic and docudrama, focusing on one intensely emotional week in the monarch's reign.  As such, it had to encompass a great deal of storm and stress, while depicting the effort it costs such a celebrated person to damp down her emotional reactions in the public eye.

This new play comes across as a kind of comical counterpoise to the film, spreading its reach across the whole of Her Majesty's life, even reaching back to her years as a young girl.

The main subject matter of the play is the weekly audience which the sovereign shares with her Prime Minister every Wednesday, whenever both are in London.  One of the carefully planned aspects of Morgan's script is the diverse range of ways in which he depicts the event evolving with time, and with the evolution of the Queen in her role.  Since the convention of the weekly audience is that nothing said there is ever revealed to any outside person, Morgan has been free to try to imagine the tone of the weekly meetings.

Unlike the rather stiff audiences shown with Tony Blair in The Queen, many of these meetings are downright hilarious.  The humour comes as a combination of clever plays on words, reversals of expectation, one-ups, and the wonderful facial expressions which Mirren brings to her role.

In between the audiences, there are numerous short scenes where the Queen's younger self (played by Bebe Cave and Nell Williams) takes the stage, including several where the younger Elizabeth and her older self talk to each other.  This is just one of the fascinating ways that Morgan's script plays fast and loose with time.  The scenes tumble over each other in anything but chronological order, so that Mirren's portrayal is laced with quick changes of costumes and wigs.  In two cases these take place very quickly -- right on the stage, in dim lighting, while the scene is progressing elsewhere.

Although the play is predominantly funny, there are some truly touching moments in a few places, and the company deserve full credit for clearly conveying the difference in tone and bringing the audience right along with them into a different kind of emotional place.

Mirren's performance is a sheer tour de force of theatrical skill and sensitivity, since she effectively portrays a different person in virtually every scene.  Not only that, but she has to age backwards and forwards at different times -- her growth is certainly not depicted in a neat linear manner.  This is one of the great strengths of the script: the way in which it treats the constant growth and change that attends a thoughtful individual's personality throughout her life.

All the Prime Ministers are marvellous (eight of the twelve PMs Elizabeth has worked with are shown).  It seems invidious to single any out, but I simply must mention two:  Haydn Gwynne's Margaret Thatcher shows almost as good a mastery of voice and gesture as Mirren's Queen, and has the additional handicap of dealing with the one badly overwritten scene in the play -- a scene designed to make Margaret Thatcher come across as something of a self-centred, obnoxious, verbal bully.  The other was Richard McCabe in the very important role of Harold Wilson, appearing in two different scenes -- at the very beginning of his Prime Ministership, as a hilarious working-class bumpkin, and again at the very end as a victim of Alzheimer's Disease, an ailment which forcibly ends his political career. 

That final scene, by the way, comes as the unspoken answer to the question from David Cameron in the previous scene of which Prime Minister was the Queen's favourite.  Given the initial negative reaction to Wilson's first appearance from Mirren, this final moment takes on a most poignant air, supplemented by her verbal observation about Baroness Thatcher's funeral.  Here indeed is the emotional heart of both the script and Mirren's performance.

Like all the shows I've seen in the NT Live series, the sets and costumes are both factually accurate and formidably detailed.  A short sequence in the intermission feature showed us the care that went into matching fabric swatches with the colours that Her Majesty is most often seen wearing in public.
Lighting was always effective without drawing overmuch attention to itself, and the sound included several aptly quiet and formal-sounding pieces to bridge some of the scene changes.

Director Stephen Daldry made most effective use of the available space in front of the sets on the Gielgud Theatre's stage, with contrasts of movement and stillness (when to stand and when to sit) as carefully judged as all royal protocol needs to be.

All in all, a thoroughly entertaining and enjoyable show -- and several more repeat dates have just been announced (the first screenings have played to sold-out houses in a number of places, and with good reason).  If you go to the NT Live website, you'll find all the details -- including the names of the performers whom I have not specifically mentioned.