Mary Stuart - Almeida / Tour

So I was at the first preview tonight. It's a little rough - some awkward staging and bits of dialogue, a few dragging moments (particularly in the 2nd half), and some stumbling over lines. Lia Williams even called for line at one point, which I've never seen in a professional production, even during previews. 

However, overall it's in pretty good shape. I found the whole evening to be very engaging. The play explores these characters and their power struggle in fascinating ways, with some beautifully constructed dialogues and monologues. Aside from some of the issues I mentioned above, the play was well-paced, and flowed nicely. The staging was fairly simple. They are on a raised platform with a revolve. Glass benches sometimes come up from the platform, but otherwise there is no furniture. Actors enter from all sides of the round platform, including from the audience. 

At the moment the actors seem to be shuffling their feet and shifting their weight a lot, with a lot of extraneous movement around the stage. It was very irritating to watch - like watching a school play with student actors who don't what what to do with their feet. Several actors were doing it, which leads me to believe that Icke is behind it somehow. Hopefully that decreases throughout previews. 

Stevenson played Mary Stuart tonight, with Williams as Elizabeth. *POSSIBLE SPOILER BELOW*

Basically the whole cast comes out onstage at the top of the show, with Stevenson and Williams standing facing each other. There is a bowl downstage center with a coin in it. A camera focuses on the coin, giving us a birds eye view streamed to screens scattered throughout the theatre. Williams called "heads" to play Elizabeth (perhaps a slight pun, given she's the one who gets to keep her head in the end?). Another actor SPINS (not flips) the coin. Tonight the spin was very weak and disappointing. Hopefully he gets a little more force behind it in future performances. It landed almost immediately, sucking some of the tension out of the moment. Once the coin lands, the cast bows to Elizabeth and ushers her offstage to begin the play immediately. 
*END SPOILER*

Both actresses were very good in their respective roles. Williams has a hardness to her Elizabeth that balanced beautifully with her more vulnerable moments. Stevenson' Mary was softer, more feminine, more overtly emotional. Yet both were, in their own ways, powerful, poised and vulnerable. I do wonder how it would be reversed - whether Williams' Mary will be as hard and biting as her Elizabeth, and vice versa for Stevenson. 

The show ran 3 hours and 20 minutes tonight, with one interval. The first half is 1h50m, the 2nd is 1h10m. Overall, the long runtime wasn't an issue for me. It started to drag toward the end but otherwise it went by quickly. 

A friend of mine saw the show tonight, and apparently it was the same pairing that I saw last night. However, in comparing notes with her, we noticed a discrepancy that could mean the whole thing is rigged.

Last night, Williams called "heads." It landed on heads, and everyone bowed to her as Elizabeth. However, according to my friend, STEVENSON called "heads" tonight, the coin landed on heads, but Williams was still Elizabeth. If there is no consistency between who calls heads and what "heads" even means for the outcome, they can easily decide beforehand who plays which role, and in the moment, they bow to the pre-determined Elizabeth regardless of the coin toss result. They can easily get away with this because the audience has no idea beforehand which coin result yields which pairing.

Hopefully this theory is debunked later in previews. It's also possible that they just have yet to decide how they want the coin toss routine to go, and they just tried something different tonight.

I suppose it's possible they want to work on one version more than another in previews (beforehand the director said it was like rehearsing two plays at once). I can't imagine they'll get away with it for long once the play opens.

Sorry. It's the thin end of the wedge. If we accept this behaviour, before long actors will be making the whole thing up.

The system not falling over is a good start but the queue system is still ridiculously frustrating. I am probably not missing much but keen to Carmen Munroe!

I got on eventually and there are tons of £10 seats left, which I wasn't expecting. Better but needs works as it is clear many in the queue probably don't even buy tickets.

I suspect this is the 'multiple device' trick - being in the queue on a phone, a tablet, a laptop, the partner's laptop,.... For anything which puts you in a random place in a queue, it makes sense to hedge your bets...

Managed to get a £10 tkt for the final matinee just now. Checkng this morning it told me I was 609 in the queue so I decided to give it a miss, glad I checked again now

This was a stunning production. Loved it. Will write more later

Yes Stephenson was Elizabeth and Williams was Mary tonight. It felt like the natural way round to me.

Surely they need to prepare both versions equally, and so to have the same number of previews of each version? Which can only be achieved by scheduling the casting during previews?

I wonder how this will be reviewed? Will the press have to take their chances like everyone else, which means that different reviews might have different actors in the parts?

Can't remember if they reviewed both versions of Frankenstein, but at least they were scheduled performances. Wouldn't surprise me if some of the 'early press' preview performances might also be fixed in order to give critics the chance to see both versions.

But very promising on these early comments that both versions are sounding strong...