‘It was a time of extraordinary violence,” says James Bonas. “There’s Elizabeth I deciding to have her cousin’s head chopped off, when her father had chopped her own mother’s head off! It’s incredible what they lived through.” The mother in question was, of course, Anne Boleyn, and the royal cousin losing her head was Mary, Queen of Scots, sent to the scaffold in 1587 and now the subject of a ballet co-created by director Bonas and choreographer Sophie Laplane for Scottish Ballet, premiering at this year’s Edinburgh international festival.
There are actually multiple festival shows revisiting Mary’s legacy in Edinburgh this summer, which all take different slants on the story of the girl who inherited the throne at just six days old, became queen consort of France as well as Scotland’s ruler, and was executed at the age of 44. “I think she was a badass,” says Mhairi McCall, whose show Mary, Queen of Rock! reimagines Mary as a rock star (drawing on icons from Tina Turner to Stevie Nicks), who returns to Scotland from France to find that rock music has been outlawed in favour of pop (that’s your Catholics v Protestants there). For Rona Johnston, writer/performer of Mary: A Gig Theatre Show, Mary’s story is a tragedy: “She could have done so much more but she was torn down in her prime.”
