Schiller's "Mary Stuart" at the Teatre Lliure

Friedrich Schiller’s Mary Stuart as currently staged at the Teatre Lliure in Barcelona presents a minimalist confinement of the Scottish queen’s forced confrontation with her English counterpart. Acting opens behind iron prison bars on an otherwise bare stage with few other props than a writing desk. As events continue a few added suggestions are considered necessary and added sparingly—a handful of chairs replace the bars, invoking Elizabeth’s court, a large lantern is set swinging, crucially invoking the passage of time and the English queen’s famous indecisiveness about signing Mary’s death warrant. Or is the slowness of enlightenment being noted as well, a different view of history somehow held back by Machiavellian circles? In any case director Sergi Belbel places the audience on two sides of this simple jail, “casting” them as it were in one sense outside, in another, inside its bars.

The Catalan translation, not surprisingly, is briskly spoken. Also, in keeping with the play’s economy, the more than 17 actors called for in Schiller’s original are reduced to seven. The narrative of events leading up to the play’s immediate events then has to be set out as context by the actors that survive the cuts. This also reflects on one of the play’s historical concepts, “the people,” expressed (for example) in Elizabeth’s concern for public opinion. However from the outset we know one basic thing about the ending: Mary will be beheaded. That stark image offers some understanding of Schiller’s decision to fictionalize (among other things) the face to face meeting between the two monarchs. For while that meeting never took place, the two did exchange letters, offering some insight into their different psychological make up. Mock-up reinventions like Mary Stuart expand our understanding and expectations of the history involved. Perhaps the psychological feature is Schiller’s greatest gift to the play’s twenty-first century actors in business suits whose roles as advisors to the queen are so well performed. Bravo Lliure!

Information about the production is at http://www.teatrelliure.com/en/agenda/temporada-2015-2016/maria-estuard