The toss of a coin determines which roles Juliet Stevenson and Lia Williams play in each performance of this daring take on Friedrich Schiller’s great verse tragedy. Last night Stevenson was Queen Elizabeth I and Williams her nemesis Mary, whom Catholic Europe considered England’s legitimate ruler.
Rather than being a gimmick, director Robert Icke’s innovation emphasises that the characters really are two sides of one coin. Each is trapped by public expectations and the narrowness of her role.
Icke is also responsible for a clear and energetic new version of the text, and the result is a disturbingly topical exploration of the haphazardness of politics.
On a simple wooden set, in modern dress, and with an insistent ambient soundtrack (plus some original music by Laura Marling) there’s an urgent sense of power as a form of confinement. At the same time we see how abruptly the future of a country and its people can be decided.
Stevenson’s Elizabeth appears worn down by the burdens of monarchy, her grandeur always tinged with angst. Though she rages spectacularly, her default setting is a watchful dryness.
As Mary, Williams is poised and cool yet has a sharp bite and a playfulness that can seem wildly provocative. But when they eventually meet — something that never happened in real life — there’s a dark thrill in observing their similarities.
The men who orbit around them, all fluent talkers, are otherwise very different. Vincent Franklin’s Lord Burleigh is stiff and unscrupulous, Rudi Dharmalingam makes Mary’s ardent supporter Mortimer intriguingly nimble, and John Light is coldly suave as the crafty Earl of Leicester.
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Until Jan 21, Almeida Theatre; almeida.co.uk