Mary, Queen of Scots is one of those perennial figures trotted out as a universal signifier, often for femininity itself, an image of rectitude and self-sacrifice in the face of unimaginable deprivation. The problem is that the historical record doesn’t quite support this narrative: Mary possibly conspired to murder her second husband in order to marry her third, and despite protestations to the contrary, remained a serious threat to the reign of Elizabeth I until the moment she was executed. She was a political player who lost, not an ingenue caught in the crossfire of history.
Famed French stage and screen actor Isabelle Huppert has worked with equally famed (and now sadly late) American theatre maker Robert Wilson twice before this collaboration, and it’s easy to see why she would come back a third time, like Mary to the matrimonial bed. Wilson’s artistic rigour was legendary, and his uncompromising aesthetic – so absolute it seems almost brutalist – frames Huppert’s singular talent superbly. She shimmers on stage, a regal pride emanating from her body and the precision of her movements. This is undeniably Huppert’s show.
