Peter Morgan's fascinating play which imagines the conversations between the Queen and her Prime Ministers in her weekly meetings was first staged in 2013 and revived in 2015 with the removal of James Callaghan and added audiences with Tony Blair and David Cameron. So it is very interesting to see the first regional production at the NST city theatre in the very month that her thirteenth Prime Minister resigned from office.
Sam Hodges, the artistic director of the NST directs the play and makes some bold staging decisions with his designer Rosanna Vize to emphasise the nature of their relationships. The traverse stage ensures that we constantly sense the feeling the protagonists must have of always being under watchful scrutiny and the travelator means the Queen is faced in her private audience room with a conveyor belt of Ministers going back to her first in 1953, Winston Churchill. He also cast one actor, Paul Kemp, in all the male Prime Minsters to emphasise that they are almost interchangeable as each deals with the crisis of the day. They then dress the stage as if we are in a fluorescent lit museum. This fresh new staging while interesting is at times distracting from the excellent central performances.
