Mary Stuart, New Diorama - review

10 April 2012

No one could accuse the unsubsidised Faction Theatre Company of starting 2012 with a lack of ambition. Mary Stuart is the second opening of a three-play, seven-week, 11-actor ensemble season and this gamble from artistic director Mark Leipacher looks to be paying off. There are uneven moments but it's never less than gripping.

The bare black walls and empty playing space serve Friedrich Schiller - in a new adaptation by Leipacher and Daniel Miller - splendidly, conjuring up the straitened scene of Mary's imprisonment at Fotheringay Castle. She's there thanks to first cousin once removed Elizabeth I, who equivocates in her distant crown room over whether to sign Mary's execution order.

Leipacher keeps the narrative stark and never lets us forget that it is these two startling women who dominate a viper's nest of double-crossing, politicking men. The costumes are a hotchpotch of modern and medieval - the French seem to be 400 years behind in the fashion stakes - but it works.

Individual tableaux stand out, not least the final image of Mary atop a ladder-cum-scaffold and Elizabeth slumped in an office chair-cum-throne.

Kate Sawyer is angst-ridden as the virgin queen but Derval Mellett's aloof Mary steals the honours, profoundly credible as someone who inspires life-or-death loyalty.

In rep until Feb 18 (020 7383 9034, newdiorama.com)

Mary Stuart
The New Diorama Theatre
Triton Street, NW1 3BF

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