“I’ve by no means been keen on the theatre.” So says Q (an older Queen Elizabeth II) in Moira Buffini’s Handbagged. Two issues strike me about that assertion: we don't know whether it is true and, whether it is, the sentiment is definitely not reciprocated. Trying again at theatre during the last 4 many years, it's fascinating to see how typically the late Queen was portrayed on the British stage and the way sympathetically she was seen in distinction to the passing parade of politicians.
In Shakespearean drama monarchy is usually equated with solitude. Richard II is conscious of the self-importance of ceremony and achingly cries that a king “wants buddies”. Henry IV is racked by guilt and even Henry V, on the eve of Agincourt, dwells on the tragic isolation of kingship.
And it’s not simply in Shakespeare. Elizabeth I in Schiller’s Mary Stuart is haunted by the accountability for the demise of her cousin, and Philip II in Don Carlos ruminates on filial treachery. Uneasy lies the top that wears the crown: it's a fixed theme of world drama.
Even within the age of constitutional monarchy, that pressure recurs. What's extra hanging is the best way Elizabeth II was typically seen as a repository of quiet knowledge. The primary dramatist to deal with her critically was Alan Bennett in A Query of Attribution on the Nationwide Theatre in 1988. In a single scene the monarch (performed by Prunella Scales) confronts Anthony Blunt, who was each surveyor of the Queen’s footage and a Communist spy.
With canny talent, she steers Blunt on to the topic of creative forgery and means that it might generally be higher to not categorical doubts a few portray’s provenance: “Keep on with the official attribution fairly than let the cat out of the bag and say, ‘Right here we've a faux.’” Which is precisely what the monarchy did with the perfidious Blunt.
The scene is clearly Bennett’s invention however the Queen’s public reticence provides the dramatist poetic licence. That means to recreate Elizabeth II on one’s personal phrases was exploited to nice impact by Sue Townsend in her bestselling e-book and subsequent 1994 play, The Queen and I. Townsend’s premise was that, in a brand new republic, the entire Royal household had been transplanted to a Leicester housing property. The play was clearly an assault on a world of inherited privilege. But even right here the Queen emerged, in Pam Ferris’s efficiency, as a likable determine liberated from a world of cosseted ritual and capable of uncover her hidden skills.
However the place dramatists actually scored was in contrasting Elizabeth II’s incremental political expertise with the expedient wants of her prime ministers. Peter Morgan in The Viewers in 2013 imagined the monarch’s weekly viewers with eight of her prime ministers, from Churchill to Cameron. This may occasionally have been clever hypothesis however the head-to-head battle between the Queen (Helen Mirren) and Margaret Thatcher (Haydn Gwynne) over the problem of South Africa (“Black South Africans need sanctions” urged the Queen) had the ring of fact. Precisely the identical battle recurred in Handbagged, not solely over South African sanctions however over Thatcher’s assertion that there isn't any such factor as society.
What does this show? Merely that a constitutional monarchy – which Shaw as soon as referred to as “a bulwark towards dictatorship” – provides the dramatist the liberty to train his or her creativeness. However the portrait of Elizabeth II that has emerged, as a passionate defender of the Commonwealth, a shrewd operator and a determine of quiet humour, feels completely believable.
My one encounter together with her occurred when the Nationwide Theatre’s manufacturing of Oklahoma! transferred to the Lyceum theatre in 1999 and the critics have been invited to fulfill her within the interval. It was the end result of a 12-hour celebration of London theatre and one in every of my colleagues stated to the Queen that he had been following her all day and was completely exhausted. “Daily,” she remarked, “is a bit like this. “You begin off in Birmingham and also you by no means know the place you could find yourself.”
Forsaking etiquette, I even had the temerity to ask her if seeing Oklahoma! once more introduced again comfortable reminiscences. Her eyes lit up as she stated that it was the primary present she and Philip had seen collectively after they acquired engaged. No matter she says in Handbagged, on that day a minimum of the Queen appeared extraordinarily keen on theatre.
Handbagged is on the Kiln theatre, London, till 22 October.
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