When Alison Peebles played Elizabeth I in the 1987 premier of Liz Lochhead’s play, Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off, strong women were very much on the agenda. It wasn’t just the seemingly unstoppable rise of Margaret Thatcher, then set to go into her third and what would prove to be her final term as Prime Minister. Running parallel throughout the 1980s was a women’s movement who’d found their voice in the 1970s, but had now taken the lead in protests against nuclear weapons based at Greenham Common, Faslane and other sites.
How much of this filtered into Lochhead’s audacious re-imagining of a tale of two queens who rocked the constitution to its foundations is debatable. One thing is certain, though, is that Gerry Mulgrew’s original production of the play opened up theatre in Scotland to a world of possibilities that combined a meaty script with a physical playing style which, combined with an original folk-based score, captured the essence of a nation’s traditions, yet made them utterly contemporary.
Twenty-two years on, and as the National Theatre of Scotland revive the play for a far flung tour of some of the country’s nether regions, Alison Peebles is very much playing queen bee again. This time, though, she’s in charge, and as director is intent on re-discovering the play for today, without any baggage from what’s gone before.
“It’s twenty years on,” Peebles says, “and we have to find if there’s any new relevance in the play. At the time of first doing the play, we had Thatcherism. Now we’re in a devolved Scotland more or less but not really, and we’re still in a position of women having to give up certain things for their careers or to gain recognition for what they do.”
Of the original production, Peebles remembers it as “an iconic piece. It was created for us and with us by Liz, but we didn’t know what we had until it opened. Up to then it was mayhem. The actual rehearsal process was tortuous You had to jiggle and decipher things. It was like walking in fog. In Communicado, we’d very much developed our own style in terms of irreverence to history, and that’s become part of the play now. A lot of people were very excited because of the style, but there were other people who said it wasn’t real history. But so much of that original production ended up in the published text. I wanted a lot of that imagery removed, and once that was done it made things a lot clearer for me. I could treat it like any other play, even though I can’t ever entirely divorce myself from the original, and of course things come back. The essence of the piece tells you the style, so it may even end up quite similar.”
Mary Queen of Scots is the second play Peebles has appeared in only to end up directing it. The first was Chris Hannan’s Shining Souls, originally produced at The Traverse then later in London, prior to Peebles’ revival for her own V.Amp productions.
“I always felt there was more to discover with Shining Souls,” Peebles says. “And to be honest I still think there’s much more. I scratched a little deeper, but it’s an immense play. People ask me if I don’t want to be in a play when I’m directing, but it’s as if I’ve a split personality. I don’t want to act when I’m directing something. Both Shining Souls and Mary Queen of Scots are terrific pieces. Oddly enough I’ve never seen another production of Mary queen of Scots since we did it. So the thing to ask is, once I get over my initial fear and trepidation, can I be objective?”
The answer, on the strength of Peebles’ back catalogue as a director, is very much in the affirmative. For a new cast, though, coming to something that has become legend, but which they’ve never seen either, can’t be easy.
“For them,” says Peebles, “it was about trying to understand the style we’re going for. That took time, because you also have to find the truth of the piece, and you have to let the actors feel their way through it to find that. But the play itself I think has stood up really well. I still find it really exciting, and I don’t think it’s dated. There’s still something at the heart of it about where we are now, politically and in terms of sexual politics. I’m very much like the cast just now. It feels like I’m discovering the play for the first time. It’s a different journey.”
Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off, Mull Theatre@Druimfin with Our Teacher’s A Troll, April 15-18, then on tour
www.nationaltheatreofscotland.com
The Herald, April 10th 2009
ends
How much of this filtered into Lochhead’s audacious re-imagining of a tale of two queens who rocked the constitution to its foundations is debatable. One thing is certain, though, is that Gerry Mulgrew’s original production of the play opened up theatre in Scotland to a world of possibilities that combined a meaty script with a physical playing style which, combined with an original folk-based score, captured the essence of a nation’s traditions, yet made them utterly contemporary.
Twenty-two years on, and as the National Theatre of Scotland revive the play for a far flung tour of some of the country’s nether regions, Alison Peebles is very much playing queen bee again. This time, though, she’s in charge, and as director is intent on re-discovering the play for today, without any baggage from what’s gone before.
“It’s twenty years on,” Peebles says, “and we have to find if there’s any new relevance in the play. At the time of first doing the play, we had Thatcherism. Now we’re in a devolved Scotland more or less but not really, and we’re still in a position of women having to give up certain things for their careers or to gain recognition for what they do.”
Of the original production, Peebles remembers it as “an iconic piece. It was created for us and with us by Liz, but we didn’t know what we had until it opened. Up to then it was mayhem. The actual rehearsal process was tortuous You had to jiggle and decipher things. It was like walking in fog. In Communicado, we’d very much developed our own style in terms of irreverence to history, and that’s become part of the play now. A lot of people were very excited because of the style, but there were other people who said it wasn’t real history. But so much of that original production ended up in the published text. I wanted a lot of that imagery removed, and once that was done it made things a lot clearer for me. I could treat it like any other play, even though I can’t ever entirely divorce myself from the original, and of course things come back. The essence of the piece tells you the style, so it may even end up quite similar.”
Mary Queen of Scots is the second play Peebles has appeared in only to end up directing it. The first was Chris Hannan’s Shining Souls, originally produced at The Traverse then later in London, prior to Peebles’ revival for her own V.Amp productions.
“I always felt there was more to discover with Shining Souls,” Peebles says. “And to be honest I still think there’s much more. I scratched a little deeper, but it’s an immense play. People ask me if I don’t want to be in a play when I’m directing, but it’s as if I’ve a split personality. I don’t want to act when I’m directing something. Both Shining Souls and Mary Queen of Scots are terrific pieces. Oddly enough I’ve never seen another production of Mary queen of Scots since we did it. So the thing to ask is, once I get over my initial fear and trepidation, can I be objective?”
The answer, on the strength of Peebles’ back catalogue as a director, is very much in the affirmative. For a new cast, though, coming to something that has become legend, but which they’ve never seen either, can’t be easy.
“For them,” says Peebles, “it was about trying to understand the style we’re going for. That took time, because you also have to find the truth of the piece, and you have to let the actors feel their way through it to find that. But the play itself I think has stood up really well. I still find it really exciting, and I don’t think it’s dated. There’s still something at the heart of it about where we are now, politically and in terms of sexual politics. I’m very much like the cast just now. It feels like I’m discovering the play for the first time. It’s a different journey.”
Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off, Mull Theatre@Druimfin with Our Teacher’s A Troll, April 15-18, then on tour
www.nationaltheatreofscotland.com
The Herald, April 10th 2009
ends
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