Janet McTeer won a Tony Award for her starring performance in "A Doll's House." If there's any justice, she'll garner another Tony nomination for her starring performance in the Donmar Warehouse production of "Mary Stuart," which just opened (April 19, 2009) at the Broadhurst Theatre. She is giving as intense, sharply focused, and nuanced a performance as any actress has given on stage in New York this season. Portraying Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland--under house arrest in England, in 1587, on charges of treason--McTeer creates a strong, sympathetic, and utterly compelling portrait.
Most Americans could probably care less about what may or may not have gone on in 16th-century England. McTeer makes us care. She involves us in the story, makes it feel wholly "of the moment." In this new version of Schiller's classic play, adapted by Peter Ostwald and directed by Phyllida Lloyd, McTeer and Harriet Walter (portrayiing England's Queen Elizabeth) are dressed in period clothes, while all the men scheming around them are dressed in modern-day power-suits like so many Dick Cheney's, as if to suggest that the men in government of that day were no different from the men in government today. It's a risky choice that costume/scenic designer Anthony Ward has made, but it works, helping the story feel contemporary. Hugh Vanstone's striking lighting effects heighten the drama throughout. And the show also boasts the best rain-effects this reviewer has ever witnessed. (A key scene is played in a pouring rain, with the actors getting wet on stage.) But everything else is secondary; McTeer's commanding performance is reason enough to see this play. She brings things to a high pitch of emotional intensity, and sustains that feeling. It's exciting to be there.
Oddly, at the performance this critic witnessed, McTeer briefly lost it, startling the audience by announcing, "I need a moment." She left the stage, while everyone else on stage stood frozen. When she returned, she was drinking a glass of water. She finished it, discarded the glass, and went on with the scene as if that strange interval had never occurred. And so complete was her hold on the audience, it made no difference that she had broken character and briefly left the stage. She instantly had us back in the world of Mary Stuart, caring deeply about this doomed queen's fate. McTeer has given the strongest dramatic performance this critic has witnessed this season.
-- R. A.
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