Mary Stuart presented by Washington Shakespeare Company at Artisphere

Mary Stuart

Artisphere
1101 Wilson Blvd Arlington

Part of WSC's debut rep in Artisphere with Richard III. In case you were afraid that only kings were of interest to the great playwrights, and that the only good leading roles written in the histories are for men, we bring you Mary Stuart. It was the great German poet, Friedrich Schiller, who explored the story of Elizabeth I, and her fierce rivalry with her cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots. WSC will use the new version by Peter Oswald.

Presented by Washington Shakespeare Company

Thru - Dec 12, 2010

Price: $21.50-$26.50

Show Type: Drama

Running Time: 2hrs; 30 mins with 1 intermission

www.washingtonshakespeare.org

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Mary Stuart Reviews

Average Rating based on 3 reviews

Highly Recommended
Recommended
Somewhat Recommended
Not Recommended

MetroWeekly - Recommended

"...Adapted by Peter Oswald, this piece of history easily mirrors the power struggles of our current political landscape. After sanctioning the trial and imprisonment of her half-sister and rival for the throne, Mary Stuart, the incumbent Queen Elizabeth I finds she has created a dangerous underdog. Facing not only a threat to her title but a public-relations nightmare, Elizabeth must decide whether Mary's sentence of death should be carried out. Though both women are powerful in their own ways, neither is ever allowed to forget they live in a man's world."

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- Kate Wingfield

Washington City Paper - Recommended

"...Directors Christopher Henley and Jay Hardee have given Richard a cyberpunk sheen, dressing much of the cast as glam rockers or goths while giving others Maori-styled face tattoos and spurring the tempo with a pulsating electronic score. Frank Britton, who perfected his limp playing another possibly supernatural menace in Constellation’s Temptation two years ago, makes an admirably protean Richard, a persuader as charming and repulsive as the role demands. As with the tale of warring royal houses best known to us these days—that’s The Godfather, right?—this Richard rubs rightest when it’s rubbing fools out. Each assassination is a bravura set piece. The casting of Anne Nottage and Carolyn Myers as the two murderers (outfitted for their grim errands in tight skirts, fishnets, and sensible knee-high PVC boots) brings a frisson to Nottage’s retort to a pleading Clarence that to be dissuaded from her mission to clip him would be “womanish.” When it’s time for Hastings to get got, they don’t slit his throat—they devour him like vampires. (Sound designer David Crandall even gives us a chainsaw cue for some of the bloodletting.) Later, the nightmares that plague Richard the night before his defeat at Bosworth Field are staged as zombie attacks, the tyrant’s victims groaning and lurching their way toward him. Mary is equally blessed with advantageous casting. As Mary and Elizabeth, respectively, Heather Haney and Sara Barker—who pitched the show—are worthy adversaries, and their single shared scene is the evening’s most electric. Haney finds the right note between Mary’s piety—well, she did have her husband offed and then hit the sack with his killer, but nobody’s perfect—and the “What, this old thing?” magnetism that enables her to command from her prison house sympathizers and conspirators both. Alex Vaughan’s hot-blooded Mortimer, nephew to her jailer, and Joe Brack (by turns charming and craven as Robert Dudley, Elizabeth’s longtime suitor who, in this telling secretly pines for Mary just like all the other boys in the yard), show us how men of varying age succumb to Mary’s charms."

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- Chris Klimek

DCTheatreScene - Highly Recommended

Haney’s Mary is a combustible mix of intelligence and passion, a woman who cannot accept the possibility of being truly powerless. Haney occupies the stage with a beautiful fire that makes both her hold over men and her threat to the crown absolutely plausible. Beneath Barker’s regal dignity and crisp actions is a complicated wavering over how to resolve the situation. Her Elizabeth conveys moments of pinched jealously and personal despair that illustrate the loneliness that can come with queenly power.

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- Steven McKnight

Mary Stuart presented by Washington Shakespeare Company at Artisphere

Mary Stuart

Mary Stuart Reviews

MetroWeekly - Recommended

Washington City Paper - Recommended

DCTheatreScene - Highly Recommended

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