With this week's premiere of Mother's Daughter, Kate Hennig's trilogy of plays about the powerful women of the Tudor period in English history reaches a knockout conclusion.
It's truly said that history is written by the winners. In the brutal, dog-eat-dog struggle to succeed to the legacy of Henry VIII, the winner was Elizabeth -- and it was in her reign and under her lengthy stewardship of the realm that the conventional historic view of her older half-sister Mary was created and embroidered. But was she really the winner of this real-life game of thrones?
In the immortal words of Sellar and Yeatman (in their comedy classic 1066 and All That), Mary was a Bad Queen and Elizabeth was a Good Queen. Mary thus was consigned to the storage closet as Bloody Mary, while Elizabeth was elevated to the deluxe penthouse as Gloriana, the Virgin Queen.
If nothing else, Mother's Daughter powerfully corrects that notion, substituting a new trope of Mary as the Caring, Thoughtful Queen and Elizabeth as the Heartless, Scheming Queen. Is this any more accurate? In some respects certainly -- in others, perhaps not quite so much.
But, as I've often observed in these pages, the notion of a "historic" play or novel is powerfully skewed away from historic accuracy by the need to compress, condense, even conflate events, times, and characters for the sake of dramatic or literary values.
Like its two predecessors in this series, Kate Hennig's script tends to draw the teeth of historicity by its very nature, putting the characters into modern clothes, placing modern words in their mouths (apart from one or two direct quotations of historic documents), calling the characters by their private or family names rather than their formal public names, and focusing far more on the private and inward lives of the characters rather than on their more public moments. So what we get are portrayals of strong-minded people struggling with complex, dangerous situations. At that level, Mother's Daughter draws some reactions that all of us can relate to at some level.
The big # 1 of them all is the whole question of how we interact with our parents, and how those interactions walk with us throughout our lives, even in later years when our parents have passed on.
The heartbeat of the play resides in the ongoing series of confrontations between Mary and her dead mother, Catalina (Katharine of Aragon), who appears all in ghostly white with pale makeup. But her voice is very much the voice of a living woman, and it becomes clear that she travels with Mary exactly as all parents travel with their children -- very much alive in the inner chambers of mind and memory. Not incidentally, Catalina is also the only character in the play who appears in Tudor period dress.
But if these confrontations are at the heart of the script, they are also its biggest weakness. Contrast this script with Hamlet, where the ghost of Hamlet's father appears only briefly at the beginning, and Hamlet is then left to tussle with the implications of what the ghost has told him. The basic problem is that Catalina does not, cannot, change at all -- since she is dead. So the same basic confrontation gets replayed over and over. Despite Hennig's best efforts to vary the texture and content of these scenes, the locked-in nature of Catalina means that Hennig is hamstrung by her own dramatic conception. Or, to return to the analogy, these scenes finally become as tedious as Hamlet would be if he kept bumping into his father's ghost at every third scene of the entire play.
It's unfortunate, because Hennig is an astute and acute observer of human nature, and the way Mary argues with her mother reflects the way many of us rebel against those parental voices deep inside our own psyches.
It's unfortunate for the actors, too, because Shannon Taylor (Mary) and Irene Poole (Catalina) can and do tear the audience into quivering shreds at their best moments -- but they have difficulty finding ways to vary scenes that almost sound like repeat marks in a musical score.
Director Alan Dilworth has led the company in a straightforward presentation of the play, not obscured by fancy directorial whimwhams. His most telling strategy is the one of placing the contending characters on either side of Mary, or in front of her and behind her, or -- in one especially powerful moment -- marking out all four compass points around her. The placement is possible because of the Studio Theatre's 3/4 arena configuration, but it also creates great visual tension to complement the dramatic tension of those scenes.
Designer Lorenzo Savoini's visual presentation of the piece is intriguing. The edge of the Studio Theatre's arena stage, and the edges of the three rear stage openings, are outlined with strips of light which can flash red, yellow, white, or (one presumes) other colours. Otherwise, floor and backdrop are plain black. A large, solid wooden table and a throne-like chair hold the centre stage. High up and off-centre to the left on the black backdrop is a small cross. You don't see it at first, until the lights inside come on to cast a cold white glow on the backdrop against which the cross stands out in black silhouette. This happens when Catalina first appears and white lighting around the doors is matched by a cold white area light wash across the stage. And the cross comes to life. The symbolism is unmistakable.
Irene Poole presents an iron-hard, ice-cold, implacable will and determination. As the play progresses, she shows her hand more and more. Her voice takes on an aura of mystical power when she speaks about the one true faith (for her, Roman Catholic), and identifies herself as its personification and Mary as its saviour. Poole uses sparingly the possibilities inherent in unlocking her spine, her upright, regal carriage, in favour of a more human closeness.
Shannon Taylor gives a phenomenal performance as Mary, all parts of her allied in partnership to show us the woman pulled every which way by conflicting external events and internal currents of raw emotion. Strong personal will and determination are clearly the forces that keep this woman on her feet and moving forward through all the contrary pulls and stresses. Her riveting assumption of this deeply complex character alone would make this play worth seeing.
Taylor works hard throughout the entire play to find Mary's own voice and to assert Mary's own will as sovereign. Amid all the conflicting voices and demands, the currents and cross-currents, Taylor's Mary gains in power and clarity with each scene.
Particularly gripping moments include the scene where she asserts that she, not the Council (of men), will set policy, and the scene where she suddenly experiences an about-face, a total change of heart, and not only condemns Jane (Lady Jane Grey, her cousin) to death but also orders that Bess (Elizabeth, her younger half-sister) be confined in the Tower of London.
Until that final reversal, Mary's policy (borne out by history) is one of moderation in all things, and Taylor throughout the play gives this rather anodyne policy a face and a voice, and makes it both believable and wise.
Beryl Bain presents Mary's confidant, Bassett, as a short-fused woman with an authoritarian view of the monarch's role. She is the one who consistently urges Mary towards the forceful course.
Bassett's diametric opposite is the other confidant, Susan, the voice of caution, of withdrawal, the seeker of safer shelter. Maria Vacratsis gives this character a strength and a voice which makes her the perfect counterweight to Bassett. Between them, these two actors clearly represent the yin and yang of every one of Mary's key decision points.
Between the left and the right of Bassett and Susan stands the stern councillor, Simon, played with vocal force and strong presence by Gordon Patrick White. His standard catchphrase always refers to "the Council" in the third person (eg., "It is the will of the Council that..."). In a sense, Catalina and Simon are the polar opposites in front of and behind Mary: both iron-willed, both implacable, and both seeking to dominate Mary and make her do their will.
Among them, these four characters clearly represent the multiple opposing forces yanking England's first reigning Queen this way and that, side to side, fore and aft. It's significant of the "out of public view" nature of the script that all four make free with the privilege of overriding the Queen and cutting her off in debate, a liberty that would be unforgivable in public. It says much for the character of Mary that she allows them to do so for some time before asserting her authority to make them await her words.
Outside of this quartet of forceful voices stand two of the three rival contenders to the throne: Bess, played by Jessica B. Hill, and Jane, portrayed by Andrea Rankin. Hill does a magnificent job of capturing the cunning, devious, political snake-in-the-grass. What she says is far less believable and far less important than what she leaves unsaid, and her favourite technique of answering a question other than the one Mary asks her is noteworthy. It's this very evasiveness and cunning, the play seems to say, that will make her the second resounding success among the Tudor monarchs. But Hill equally captures the reality that blood does tell, and that a part of Bess truly regrets contending with her half-sister for power.
Jessica B. Hill makes a startling impact as the quite different spirit or memory of Anne Boleyn. In the scenes where she appears, Anne and Catalina become the opposing forces striving for Mary's soul. Because both Catalina and Mary always considered her so, Anne appears as a slovenly slattern, a woman who is all sensuality and nothing of reason, duty, or responsibility. Is this fair to Anne? In strict historic truth, of course not -- but in this play she appears only as Mary thinks of her.
Andrea Rankin's portrayal of Lady Jane Grey is fascinating in a different way. Like Rebecca Nurse in Arthur Miller's The Crucible, Jane "is one foot in heaven already; naught may hurt her more." Rankin plays this appealing character as a gentle woman of great faith, a mixture of naivete and worldly wisdom, of childlike simplicity and superhuman compassion. It's a contrast, both refreshing and dramatically relieving, to the cold heartlessness of so much else in this play.
The third major contender for the throne, Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, appears only by reference, and it instantly becomes clear that mutual hatred and distrust of her are one common thread binding Mary and Bess together.
The other common thread, the blood tie, is clearly elucidated in the final scene, a kind of epilogue, in which the two dead queens stand on the balcony, overlooking an imaginary view of Westminster Abbey, and commenting on the fate that led to both of them being buried in the same tomb, with Elizabeth's casket on top of Mary's, while an even grander monument nearby marks the resting place of Mary Stuart. Their ironic comments make clear what some in the audience will already know: that Mary Queen of Scots was the ultimate winner, since both Tudor Queens died childless. It was Mary's son, James VI of Scotland, who became James I of England upon Elizabeth's eventual death.
So, in a final, touching tableau, Mary Tudor and Elizabeth Tudor join hands and stand, linked again at last by the blood tie, as the lights fade.
With Mother's Daughter, Kate Hennig has again demonstrated her mettle as a dramatist to be reckoned with. Her work demonstrates a strong creative discipline which enables her to say a great deal with a very few well-chosen words. This play is every bit as formidable as The Last Wife which opened the cycle in 2015. Seeing this production made me regret very deeply that I missed the intervening entry, The Virgin Trial, staged at Stratford in 2017.
It's unfortunate, because Hennig is an astute and acute observer of human nature, and the way Mary argues with her mother reflects the way many of us rebel against those parental voices deep inside our own psyches.
It's unfortunate for the actors, too, because Shannon Taylor (Mary) and Irene Poole (Catalina) can and do tear the audience into quivering shreds at their best moments -- but they have difficulty finding ways to vary scenes that almost sound like repeat marks in a musical score.
Director Alan Dilworth has led the company in a straightforward presentation of the play, not obscured by fancy directorial whimwhams. His most telling strategy is the one of placing the contending characters on either side of Mary, or in front of her and behind her, or -- in one especially powerful moment -- marking out all four compass points around her. The placement is possible because of the Studio Theatre's 3/4 arena configuration, but it also creates great visual tension to complement the dramatic tension of those scenes.
Designer Lorenzo Savoini's visual presentation of the piece is intriguing. The edge of the Studio Theatre's arena stage, and the edges of the three rear stage openings, are outlined with strips of light which can flash red, yellow, white, or (one presumes) other colours. Otherwise, floor and backdrop are plain black. A large, solid wooden table and a throne-like chair hold the centre stage. High up and off-centre to the left on the black backdrop is a small cross. You don't see it at first, until the lights inside come on to cast a cold white glow on the backdrop against which the cross stands out in black silhouette. This happens when Catalina first appears and white lighting around the doors is matched by a cold white area light wash across the stage. And the cross comes to life. The symbolism is unmistakable.
Irene Poole presents an iron-hard, ice-cold, implacable will and determination. As the play progresses, she shows her hand more and more. Her voice takes on an aura of mystical power when she speaks about the one true faith (for her, Roman Catholic), and identifies herself as its personification and Mary as its saviour. Poole uses sparingly the possibilities inherent in unlocking her spine, her upright, regal carriage, in favour of a more human closeness.
Shannon Taylor gives a phenomenal performance as Mary, all parts of her allied in partnership to show us the woman pulled every which way by conflicting external events and internal currents of raw emotion. Strong personal will and determination are clearly the forces that keep this woman on her feet and moving forward through all the contrary pulls and stresses. Her riveting assumption of this deeply complex character alone would make this play worth seeing.
Taylor works hard throughout the entire play to find Mary's own voice and to assert Mary's own will as sovereign. Amid all the conflicting voices and demands, the currents and cross-currents, Taylor's Mary gains in power and clarity with each scene.
Particularly gripping moments include the scene where she asserts that she, not the Council (of men), will set policy, and the scene where she suddenly experiences an about-face, a total change of heart, and not only condemns Jane (Lady Jane Grey, her cousin) to death but also orders that Bess (Elizabeth, her younger half-sister) be confined in the Tower of London.
Until that final reversal, Mary's policy (borne out by history) is one of moderation in all things, and Taylor throughout the play gives this rather anodyne policy a face and a voice, and makes it both believable and wise.
Beryl Bain presents Mary's confidant, Bassett, as a short-fused woman with an authoritarian view of the monarch's role. She is the one who consistently urges Mary towards the forceful course.
Bassett's diametric opposite is the other confidant, Susan, the voice of caution, of withdrawal, the seeker of safer shelter. Maria Vacratsis gives this character a strength and a voice which makes her the perfect counterweight to Bassett. Between them, these two actors clearly represent the yin and yang of every one of Mary's key decision points.
Between the left and the right of Bassett and Susan stands the stern councillor, Simon, played with vocal force and strong presence by Gordon Patrick White. His standard catchphrase always refers to "the Council" in the third person (eg., "It is the will of the Council that..."). In a sense, Catalina and Simon are the polar opposites in front of and behind Mary: both iron-willed, both implacable, and both seeking to dominate Mary and make her do their will.
Among them, these four characters clearly represent the multiple opposing forces yanking England's first reigning Queen this way and that, side to side, fore and aft. It's significant of the "out of public view" nature of the script that all four make free with the privilege of overriding the Queen and cutting her off in debate, a liberty that would be unforgivable in public. It says much for the character of Mary that she allows them to do so for some time before asserting her authority to make them await her words.
Outside of this quartet of forceful voices stand two of the three rival contenders to the throne: Bess, played by Jessica B. Hill, and Jane, portrayed by Andrea Rankin. Hill does a magnificent job of capturing the cunning, devious, political snake-in-the-grass. What she says is far less believable and far less important than what she leaves unsaid, and her favourite technique of answering a question other than the one Mary asks her is noteworthy. It's this very evasiveness and cunning, the play seems to say, that will make her the second resounding success among the Tudor monarchs. But Hill equally captures the reality that blood does tell, and that a part of Bess truly regrets contending with her half-sister for power.
Jessica B. Hill makes a startling impact as the quite different spirit or memory of Anne Boleyn. In the scenes where she appears, Anne and Catalina become the opposing forces striving for Mary's soul. Because both Catalina and Mary always considered her so, Anne appears as a slovenly slattern, a woman who is all sensuality and nothing of reason, duty, or responsibility. Is this fair to Anne? In strict historic truth, of course not -- but in this play she appears only as Mary thinks of her.
Andrea Rankin's portrayal of Lady Jane Grey is fascinating in a different way. Like Rebecca Nurse in Arthur Miller's The Crucible, Jane "is one foot in heaven already; naught may hurt her more." Rankin plays this appealing character as a gentle woman of great faith, a mixture of naivete and worldly wisdom, of childlike simplicity and superhuman compassion. It's a contrast, both refreshing and dramatically relieving, to the cold heartlessness of so much else in this play.
The third major contender for the throne, Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, appears only by reference, and it instantly becomes clear that mutual hatred and distrust of her are one common thread binding Mary and Bess together.
The other common thread, the blood tie, is clearly elucidated in the final scene, a kind of epilogue, in which the two dead queens stand on the balcony, overlooking an imaginary view of Westminster Abbey, and commenting on the fate that led to both of them being buried in the same tomb, with Elizabeth's casket on top of Mary's, while an even grander monument nearby marks the resting place of Mary Stuart. Their ironic comments make clear what some in the audience will already know: that Mary Queen of Scots was the ultimate winner, since both Tudor Queens died childless. It was Mary's son, James VI of Scotland, who became James I of England upon Elizabeth's eventual death.
So, in a final, touching tableau, Mary Tudor and Elizabeth Tudor join hands and stand, linked again at last by the blood tie, as the lights fade.
With Mother's Daughter, Kate Hennig has again demonstrated her mettle as a dramatist to be reckoned with. Her work demonstrates a strong creative discipline which enables her to say a great deal with a very few well-chosen words. This play is every bit as formidable as The Last Wife which opened the cycle in 2015. Seeing this production made me regret very deeply that I missed the intervening entry, The Virgin Trial, staged at Stratford in 2017.
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