The Mary of the title refers to Mary Queen of Scots, and this play is an inquisition into her moral virtues, although she never appears on stage to defend herself and judgment is cast in her silence.
Three characters argue the case for or against her instead: Agnes (Rona Morison), a maid at Holyrood Palace who condemns Mary Stuart’s motives and Catholicism; Thompson (Brian Vernel), a servant with self-interested allegiances; and its central figure, Sir James Melville (Douglas Henshall), the Queen’s most loyal courtier who stands alone as the nation turns against her.
The argument is whether Mary marries the upstart earl of Bothwell out of destructive passion or if she is raped and then forced into a union that leads to her downfall in Scotland. These characters’ positions change, giving us versions of the truth, Rashomon-like, as we head towards Sir James’s capitulation and abandonment of Mary.
Rooted in historical fact, Rona Munro’s standalone drama is also a companion piece to her James Plays cycle which speaks of how women, even those as powerful as Mary, are judged and vilified on sexual virtue. We see the case built against her and at times it seems like Sir James is in the dock, his testimony of her rape questioned until it is dismantled. This very charged theme of consent has a contemporary resonance but by the end speaks too emphatically about now.
Cleanly directed by Roxana Silbert, this is a debate play with little action. It feels static at the start but builds intrigue and has a thrilling series of quick-fire exchanges although the pace does not sustain itself. Matt Haskins’s lighting design uses expressive plays of shadow and light to crank up suspense and Ashley Martin-Davis’s set has a bold starkness.
Morison gives an especially gripping performance but Agnes’s switch of position turns on a single factual detail and her sympathy towards Mary sounds too suddenly removed from the fierce ideological arguments she made previously. Sir James’s resignation, meanwhile, seems more a function of the plot than the end to a penetrating character study. But this is still an engaging production and an arresting way to stage the downfall of a contested figure in Stuart history.
At Hampstead theatre, London, until 26 November.
