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| Eileen Atkins. (Photos: Friedman-Abeles.) |
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| Claire Bloom, John Devlin. |
Robert Bolt’s British
history drama about Mary Queen of Scots and Queen Elizabeth I was produced on
Broadway with Eileen Atkins in her London role of Elizabeth but with Claire
Bloom taking the role of Mary, played on the West End by Sarah Miles, Bolt’s wife.
The drama was intended as a non-romantic “black play,” a work that sought to
present the familiar story of the warring 16th-century monarchs in
an unvarnished, realistic fashion.
Sticking to the
facts, Bolt avoided having Mary and Elizabeth meet, a fabrication famously used
in Schiller’s classic Mary Stuart.
The years from 1559-1587 are traversed by the action, with the leading actors
aging visibly during the course of the performance. The chief point of this
long historical overview is to show the evolving characters of the queens, Mary
growing from a sensual 16-year-old political novice to a woman of intelligence,
feeling, and warmth, and Elizabeth moving from a charming, vivacious noblewoman
to a steely leader of cold craft and political wisdom.
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| Claire Bloom, Eileen Atkins, Stephen Macht, Theodore Tenley. |
Bolt uses various theatrical
devices to telescope the 28 years covered. Among them are direct address
speeches delivered to fill in narrative gaps.
Essentially a star
vehicle, Vivat! Vivat! Regina met
mostly with polite acceptance or indifferent rebuffs. The critics applauded
Carl Toms’s lavish and well-designed sets and costumes, but could not agree on
the theatrical value of Bolt’s treatment. This “new and persuasive” telling was
flawed and “insubstantial,” but vital, noted Clive Barnes, who pointed to the
playwright’s clever use of contemporary colloquialisms, sophisticated wit,
honest characterizations, and “smart and glossy” writing. T.E. Kalem described
it as “a vivid tapestry of passion, blood, majesty and death.”
Less responsive was
Walter Kerr, who failed to see the justification for writing the play. Brendan
Gill was “dismayed” by seeing the potential for a history drama of
international power struggles dwindle into an excuse “for courtly conversation
and amorous byplay.”
Atkins and Bloom were
showered with compliments although most of the latter’s accolades were directed
more at her beauty than her acting which, although professionally smooth, used
an unconvincing French accent (supported by history). Atkins received a Tony
nomination for Best Actress, Play, and Bloom won a Drama Desk Award for
Outstanding Performance. The play itself was Tony-nominated, and other Tony
nominations went to Douglas Rain, who played William Cecil, for Best Supporting
Actor, Play, and Lee Richardson, who played Lord Bothwell, in the same category.
Other names in the
large cast included Diana Kirkwood, Alexander Scourby, Ralph Clanton, Stephen
Macht, Theodore Tenley, John Devlin, and Ralph Drischell.
Do you enjoy Theatre’s Leiter Side? As you may know, since New York’s theatres were forced into hibernation by Covid-19, this blog has provided daily posts on the hundreds of shows that opened in the city, Off and on Broadway, between 1970 and 1975. These have been drawn from an unpublished manuscript that would have been part of my multivolume Encyclopedia of the New York Stage series, which covers every show, of every type, from 1920 through 1950. Unfortunately, the publisher, Greenwood Press, decided it was too expensive to continue the project beyond 1950.
Before I began offering these 1970-1975 entries, however, Theatre’s Leiter Side posted over 1,600 of my actual reviews for shows from 2012 through 2020. The first two years of that experience were published in separate volumes for 2012-2013 and 2013-2014 (the latter split into two volumes). The 2012-2013 edition also includes a memoir in which I describe how, when I was 72, I used the opportunity of suddenly being granted free access to every New York show to begin writing reviews of everything I saw. Interested readers can find these collections on Amazon.com by clicking here.
Up next: Voices.
