Mary Stuart

I have been privileged over the years to see performances that changed my world. To be honored in the company of talent so extraordinary that you're slightly different when you leave the theater. The first time I realized that was possible was when I saw Kate Nelligan in Plenty in 1983. More recently, Janet McTeer's Nora in the 1997 revival of A Doll's House.

Both McTeer and Harriet Walter give life-altering performances in the revival of Schiller's Mary Stuart. I hunger for those moments where the moment is so powerful you forget to breathe. (See last year's review of Passing Strange.) Individually and together, McTeer and Walter give any number of those moments.

In Peter Oswald's adaptation and Phyllida Lloyd's stark production of Schiller's 1800 work, everything seems designed to put the two queens (McTeer is the Stuart and Walter is Elizabeth I) front and center. The queens, in Elizabethan dress, are surrounded by men in modern suits. Set pieces are minimal. Even the structure of the play supports this acting tour de force. Each queen gets a major scene in the first act. In the second, they get a lone scene together and final individual scenes.

There's no scenery chewing here. This is powerful stuff and not for the feint of heart. One must live and one must die.

It's so easy to focus on such stirring performances, that one might overlook the power of the play and the phenomenal production. Even simple theatrical tricks stir (ah, the wonderment of theater). In Act I Elizabeth casts shadows on the back wall that make her seem forty feet tall. Mary casts a human-size shadow if she cast one at all. The second act rain storm (not ruining anything here) is more powerful for how it ends than for how it begins, though it's the latter that gets the round of applause. Simple things with huge effect.

The play, for all its simplicity of structure, is layered and complex. These two women have more in common than they are different. They are surrounded by men and their destinies have been set in motion by men. They have developed the stubborness of men that will lead to their downfalls.

That Elizabeth survives (nothing ruined here, either) does not make her triumphant. History makes this clear, but that knowledge is not necessary to the play. Elizabeth's final, defeated moment after Mary's death is compelling in its own right. Haunting.

There is much to be learned from Mary Stuart. From the actresses and from the play.