Mirren reveals queen’s private persona

Published Aug 2, 2013

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THE AUDIENCE

(from National Theatre Live series)

DIRECTOR: Stephen Daldry

CAST: Helen Mirren, Michael Elwyn, Haydn Gwynne, Robert Hardy, Richard McCabe, Nathaniel Parker, Paul Ritter, Rufus Wright and Geoffrey Beevers

VENUE: Gielgud Theatre (screened locally at Cinema Nouveau theatres in Joburg, Pretoria, Durban and Cape Town as well as Ster-Kinekor Blue Route in Tokai)

SCREENINGS: August 3, 4, 7 and 8

RATING: ****

She’s made it her own. No one would dare play Queen Elizabeth II again following this second Mirren turn as the monarch. She’s really got it down pat now and her painstakingly captured performance reveals more about the woman who is determined not to show herself to the world. Or as little as she can get away with in these modern media-frenzied times.

But Mirren shows facial expressions that are so imprinted on your mind, the pictures in newspapers and magazines suddenly reveal much more than they did before. It’s an extraordinary thing.

For the past 60 years, the queen has met each of her 12 prime ministers in a weekly audience at Buckingham Palace – a meeting like no other in British public life because it is private. Both parties have an unspoken agreement never to repeat what is said.

But, says the playwright (see story below), in an interview seen during the screening, they have to get to know one another extremely well because of these intimate meetings.

It might be 70 hours of conversations during a prime minister’s run and because they’re not having a meal and there’s no other distraction, it’s just the two of them, face to face – developing sometimes into a heart-to-heart.

That’s why, following the much acclaimed movie The Queen, playwright Peter Morgan’s next play, The Audience, breaks this contract of silence – and imagines a series of pivotal meetings between the Downing Street incumbents and their queen.

And while Morgan didn’t have transcripts to work from, there was enough out there to make some conjectures and to imagine either the conversations, the percentage of chumminess or lack thereof – and in some cases both.

It’s a fascinating insider’s glimpse from the script and the performance point of view. Mirren is given another chance to refine her characterisation of the queen and she does it with such filigreed detail, the way she walks, talks, her posture and, naturally, her clothes also add to the full persona.

There’s also a conversation in-between the performance where Mirren and the costume designer talk about that aspect and here they had everything to work with. But the minute detail, the way a colour was selected to portray a specific mood or particular moment, also gives insight into what the life – just one tiny yet huge aspect – might be like.

It must be quite horrifying to have every item of clothing ever worn documented for everyone to see. How many of us could or would like to pull that off even with all the privilege that comes with it?

It’s also that arc of time that’s captured from Churchill (Hardy) to Cameron (Wright) and the mixing up of these timelines with The Queen moving between a novice queen to one who has seen everything before and isn’t easily dismissed or challenged and especially not underestimated – which happened at the particular prime minister’s peril.

The personalities of the different prime ministers, the gender, (we all know Queen Elizabeth only faced a female prime minister once in her many years as the reigning queen – Margaret Thatcher), and the dynamics as the queen grows older and her prime ministers ever younger – all of these come into play.

So apart from astonishing cast- ing and performances that have you drooling delightedly, it’s also the intrigue of who got on with whom and why and how close to the bone does the playwright get, that is riveting.

Sitting at such a distance as we are – in time in some instances, but also geographically – it’s good to be reminded about the shenanigans that persistently raise their head in politics all across the world, but also, it’s like drawing a curtain on history as you witness Her Majesty giggling with Harold Wilson (McCabe) or hardly able to disguise her contempt when Tony Blair enters the room.

From beginning to end, it’s theatrical bliss delivered by the best.

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