"Queen Anne" by Helen Edmundson
Nottingham Lace Market Theatre

The play tells the story of Queen Anne and her close friend Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, exploring their relationship as Anne prepares to take the throne and in the early years of her reign.

Princess Anne has been plagued by ill health all her life and, despite 17 pregnancies, has produced no heirs with her husband, Prince George of Denmark. The union of King William III and Anne’s sister Queen Mary was also childless, leaving Anne in succession for the throne.

Anne’s advisors seek to influence the seemingly meek and vulnerable Anne. Sarah Churchill, her friend since childhood, is granted key positions in the Royal Household and seeks to advise, and manipulate Anne to further her own political agenda and career as well as that of her husband, the Duke of Marlborough.

Anne begins to understand her power as she becomes increasingly involved and informed in political matters. Sarah pushes the Whig agenda that supports her husband’s wars, but Anne is drawn to advisors who share her religious views and support a strong monarchy. As a result, her friendship with Sarah starts to unravel and Anne begins to find new allies.

Michelle Smith plays Queen Anne, and what a feisty woman on and off the throne she was! Then again when you take into account her medical issues, you can understand why. A powerful performance, not only vocally, as there's quite a bit of shouting, but also physically. Anne's costumes look as if they may not be the easiest to move around in, but Michelle did it all in style.

Abigail Hill is played by Dani Wain. Abigail is related to Sarah as well as Harley and manages to secure herself a job via Sarah with Anne, as her personal maid, and that is where the jealousy starts to set in with Sarah.

Tamzin Grayson-Gaunt plays Sarah Churchill, and here is another powerhouse of a performance as the sparks start to fly between the childhood friends, Anne and Sarah. You can feel the mercury rising within Sarah and when she blows, she really lets rip. To try and rescue the relationship and Sarah's political foothold, she decides to lower herself to dirty tactics, but will it work?

This play is a real ensemble piece with the remaining cast consisting of Alistair Hudson (Prince George of Denmark and Dr John Radcliffe), James Whitby (Robert Harley MP), Matthew Huntbach (John Churchill), Jonathan Cleaver (Sidney Godolphin), Bernard Whelan (King William III, John Arbuthnot and the Archbishop of Canterbury), Ruben Whitter (Jonathan Swift), Micha Damola (Daniel Defoe and Colonel Masham), Mark Gadsby (Arthur Maynwaring MP and the Priest), Michelle Arscott (Lady-in-waiting and Jezebel), Melika Reza (Lady-in-Waiting as well as Judith) and last but by no means least Sam Howitt (Jack Churchill and the Palace Groom).

Guy Evans is the Director as well as the Set Designer. What I really enjoyed about this staging is that there was never a moment when there was no-one on stage; as one actor or group of actors exited, the next scene was on before the previous actors had vacated and that really made for a smooth transition from scene to scene as well as visually keeping the audience's attention throughout. The set design was simple with swathes of regal coloured material creating a royal backdrop. we did not need anything else because the story carried everything we needed to know about placement. Sometimes less is more and here, that was the case.

A great deal of additional work has been put into this production to get everything as accurate as possible. This is done with the help of Steven Scott Kaye, who is a former footman to HM Queen Elizabeth II, on Royal Etiquette, Aaron Connolly is the Singing Tutor, and Paul Cook has been drafted in to look after the Late 17th Century Deportment.

Nick Gale is on Lighting Design and the Lighting Assistant is Allan Green. Again, a simple design and as I mentioned previously, a simple design option can be better, leaving the "lights down" to indicate the end of the acts. For an audience member, when I say these designs are simple, this is in no way a dumbing down of the talents of the designers.

The Sound Design is by Gareth Morris, who is also the Stage Manager for this production, and Sound Assistant is Jordan Gibb. Simplicity runs throughout the technical side of this production, and the subtle effects for stuff like the fireworks scene drift throughout sounding completely natural in their unobtrusive placements.

As you'd expect, the costumes were fantastic, as were the wigs and the make-up, and the actors who have to wear some of them deserve their dressing gowns and onesies - do people still wear them nowadays? - and their after-show tipple just for having to don them.

I'll admit at this stage that I'm not a massive fan of historical dramas, but the story is so good and the acting so passionate, that I did really get into this, and found the end of the play arriving before I realised that we had reached it.

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Review: Queen Anne. Lace Market Theatre.

Commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, in 2015, Queen Anne by Helen Edmundson, and directed for the Lace Market Theatre by Guy Evans tells the little known story of Queen Anne, as she ascends the throne.

Queen Anne is of ill health and is plagued with sadness following the death of her child and her inability to produce an heir despite 17 pregnancies. Michelle Smith plays the monarch as a sympathetic character, highlighting vulnerabilities, and, at least in Act 1, Anne is presented as weak and overly trusting. Smith does a fine job of using her physicality and voice to show Anne’s fragility and contrastingly, her strength when needed.

The story focuses mainly on the relationship between Queen Anne and her close “"friend" and favourite, the Duchess of Marlborough. Watching Tamzin Grayson-Gaunt take the stage, I can only describe her as a cross between Game of Thrones’ Daenerys Targarian and Lady Macbeth. From the outset, there is just something not to trust about her character, even though she presents as having the Queen’s best interests at heart. It becomes clearer though that she is seeking power – she is a formidable lady, and the audience only hopes that Anne will see through her façade before the curtain falls. Grayson-Gaunt has the poise expected of a power-hungry character, adapting tone and physicality to suit the intention of the character.

Its great to see a political period drama with three female leads. Played by Dani Wain, Abigail Hill is one of the first characters we are introduced to and her exchange with Jonathan Swift (Ruben Whitter) and Robert Harley (James Whitby) really cemented her character. Not afraid to stand up for herself and get what she wants, Abigail finds herself waiting on the queen and married to the sweet-tempered Colonel Masham. Special mention goes to Ruben Whitter who has real presence on the stage and perfectly captures the posture and clipped speech of the time.

The play itself has a lot of characters to keep up with actors playing too many multiple characters which causes some confusion, especially in regard to Prince George and Dr Radcliffe. While Alistair Hudson does his absolute best to play the roles differently (and I must mention Hudson’s memorable Danish accent which adds to the characterisation of Prince George), the costumes are too similar to make an easy separation. If it were possible to have cast them separately the differentiation would have been much clearer,

Edmundson’s script is so very wordy, with surprisingly little action, not helped by a few fluffed lines this evening. and some directorial blocking issues. There needs to be more emphasis placed on purposeful staging and lighting. For this reviewer, a bare stage with it’s draped curtains, is just far too simplistic and does not provide enough of a "place" for the play to be set and trusts too much on theatrical economy.

While the fabulous collection of elaborate costumes rallied together by (Doreen Sheard, Max Bromley, Pandora Murdin, Paddy Signorini, T Taberner) and wigs (Linda Croston) make it very clear that this is a period piece, I really do miss a proper sumptuous setting and simple heavy hangings don’t always work in this production. The play is also quite historically complex, and granted, perhaps, someone with more Queen Anne period knowledge than I would have been able to follow it with ease. However, all too often, I’m afraid I find my attention is often wandering to the point of boredom. I sincerely want to care more about the characters, an awful lot more than is sporadically given.

The rightfully world-acclaimed playwright Helen Edmundson is well known for her admirable and gutsy theatrical portrayals of classical figures such as her Mother Theresa in Mother Teresa is Dead, the author of Frankenstein in the play Mary Shelley and Tolstoy’s tragic heroine Anna Karenina ever at odds with the would-be romantic and non-romantic men in her life and on the edges of Russian High Class and Working Class civilisation. But somehow the overly complex nature of the myriad of characters milling about on stage in Edmundson’s and The Lace Market Theatre’s Queen Anne literally loses the plot for me. I wish it were not so.

However, despite my misgivings, I’d like to offer a huge well done to the cast, especially the main characters – they have a lot of lines to learn and most are enormously convincing in their roles. You will definitely come away from Queen Anne with a lot of historical knowledge if not a totally fulfilling theatrical treat.

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