And now for your Scottish history lesson...
Mary (Hampstead Theatre, London) Verdict: Hard yards ★★★✩✩
RONA MUNRO’S new play about Mary Queen of Scots is nothing if not heavy going — but if you can put in the hard yards, and feel strong enough for a lesson in 16th-century Scottish history, it’s probably worth it.
On the plus side, it’s just 90 minutes long, and although sometimes as dry as oatcakes, it’s lit up by a star turn from Douglas Henshall (he of Shetland off the telly).
Henshall plays Protestant Scottish courtier Sir James Melville who’s loyal to Catholic Queen Mary, despite her being in bad odour, due to a rising tide of Protestant populism.
Mary never appears here to make her own case, but Melville helps her escape plotters in Edinburgh, only for her to be abducted by his ambitious rival the Earl of Bothwell and taken to Dunbar castle. Munro’s big question then, is if Mary was raped and forced to marry Bothwell — or if she took him freely.
As one character says, Scotland is ‘a nation that lives by argument’ and so too does Munro’s play. She chisels through long, complex debates analysing Melville’s motivation in supporting Mary. It’s all knowingly difficult — ‘thrawn’ even, as they say in Caledonia. Yet, it has the deliciously sour snarl of modern Scots vernacular.
Standing straight as a guardsman, Henshall governs the stage with the full weight of his considerable authority. He deploys stoicism and wiliness, before yielding to anger and tears as his ties to Mary are exposed.
Brian Vernel belies his years as a young kid about court who Henshall first commands, then later answers to. And there is cold Presbyterian fire from Rona Morison as the serving girl who starts as a cheerleader of puritanism — but ends up an angry feminist.
Roxana Silbert’s lean and Lutheran production carries not an ounce of Papist fat.
And Ashley Martin-Davis’s set offers scant visual consolation, with its dingy wood panelled ante-room that later opens onto a spartan court room. But then they say hard work is good for the soul.