An Audience with Helen Mirren

The other day I went to see the Queen - Helen Mirren playing Elizabeth II in The Audience at The Gielgud (running until June 15). 

This new play by Peter Morgan reunites some of the creative team (including Morgan) behind the so-called "Tony Blair trilogy" (The Deal, The Queen and The Special Relationship). Mirren memorably played Queen Elizabeth II in The Queen, winning both the BAFTA and Academy Award for Best Actress that year. She really is the queen of queens, having played Elizabeth I and II (apparently the only actress to ever have done so), as well as Queen Charlotte in The Madness of King George.

As Morgan explains in his introduction to the play (available now on Amazon and Kindle), the idea behind The Audience came from The Queen. The Queen, where possible, holds a private audience with the prime minister, where they are free to discuss issues of national and personal interest in complete confidence. This tradition (which, the play emphasises, is not set in the constitution, even if Britain had one) apparently dates back to regular meetings between Elizabeth II's father and Winston Churchill. 

Since then, the Queen has met with 12 prime ministers, and the play tries to imagine what might have gone on behind closed doors. Morgan freely admits that he has made very specific decisions in which prime minsters to portray, including some of the more well-known (Churchill, Thatcher, Major) and some who were known to be favourites (Wilson, Callaghan). The play encapsulates PMs from Churchill right up to the present David Cameron, but does not follow a chronological order.

As expected, Helen Mirren gives a truly bravura performance. Her constant costume changes (many of which take place on stage) are astonishing in themselves. I have never seen an actress receive so many standing ovations, to the point where I couldn't even see the stage from where I was sitting in the stalls! Richard McCabe is also great as Wilson, and the pair rightfully deserve their Olivier Award nominations.

The play is surprisingly very funny, with the audience (many of whom were of a mature enough age to be able to recognise most of the PMs and references) constantly in stitches, but also in tears, especially when Elizabeth II has conversations with her child self about the challenges and loneliness of the top job:

YOUNG ELIZABETH: To have to sit there like a stuffed animal and listen politely to mad people for hours on end - 

ELIZABETH: That's one version of it. A kinder one, perhaps, would be that you're allowing complicated people, over-complicated people to measure themselves against something unchanging. Permanent. Simple.

It was particularly poignant to see the play two days after the death of Margaret Thatcher. Witness this exchange between Thatcher and the Queen:

THATCHER: My responsibility for the time I have in office is to put sentimentality to one side and look after this country's interests...it is my judgement that to focus on our economy and our standing in the world would be best for Britain and incidentally the profile of the person that personifies it.

ELIZABETH: You, Prime Minister.

THATCHER: No, you, Ma'am. You'll be here having these conversations long after I've gone.

The sets are handsome, and include real archival footage projected on to the stage. Some have been a bit disdainful about the inclusion of real live corgis in the production. On this occasion, they proved delightfully diverting, especially as one of them ran off in the wrong direction!

For those of you in the UK and overseas who will not get to see the play, it will be shown via National Theatre Live. Coming soon to a cinema near you - don't miss it!