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King Charles III
Birmingham Rep
***** THE
trials of our likely future king produces one of those intriguing what
if dramas. You know the sort of thing, what if we had lost
the Battle of Britain and Hitler had won the war? What if Guy Fawkes had
succeeded or Richard III won at Bosworth, Harold held firm at Hastings
or in this case, what if Charles becoming king would lead to the
greatest constitutional crisis since the abdication of his great uncle,
Edward VIII in 1936. With the Queen becoming
the regal equivalent of Wayne Rooney, he top scorer for England, she top
Royal for longevity, Mike Bartlett’s play looks beyond her reign to her
inevitable demise, the opening of the play, with a sombre, candlelit
Agnus Dei,
and the succession of Charles. And what a Charles. Robert Powell is just superb
in the role. There is no impersonation of the Charles we all know, or
his mannerisms; Powell shuns caricature to make the new King into a real
person. We see a man, a pensioner already remember, who has waited and
devoted all his life to being king, a man born to rule. Yet his first act as monarch is supposed to be
the rubber stamping of a privacy bill into law with the Royal Assent –
except Charles has reservations. In its
Charles and his family, as we all know, have suffered plenty of often unwarranted intrusion at the hands of the Press yet in a moving speech the new King accepts that that is part of the price of a free Press that can safeguard and protect us against Government excess and corruption. All he asks is that some of his reservations are considered. Conscience over constitution.
To the Prime Minister it is meddling with the
king no more than a ceremonial embellishment to the will of Parliament;
to Charles it is Parliament which is the embellishment, an optional
extra like SatNav in a car, useful, but unnecessary for the car to
function. Tim Treloar’s Evans is
a believable, dour, Welsh socialist, a Republican at heart but he is a
paragon of virtue against the devious Mr Stevens, the Tory leader of the
opposition, who is not just two faced, but each face probably has two
faces as well. Giles Taylor is suitably Machiavellian,
suggesting, persuading the King in private, encouraging him on a path
that would certainly be the best for the Conservative party if perhaps
not the wisest course for a king. In public it is another face of the
slippery, smarmy Stevens, attacking the king and siding with Evans in
the battle of Parliament against the Crown – with one eye on public
opinion and another on using the King to manufacture an election. A
politician through and through. Amid the politic we have the domestic with
Penelope Beaumont as Camilla, a strong supportive wife offering perhaps
not the best advice, and then enter William and Kate, played
convincingly, by Ben Righton and Jennifer Bryden. We find William indecisive and torn between
loyalty to a regal trinity of father, king or monarchy, but behind him
is Kate, ambitious and scheming, who pushes him in the direction she
wants him to go. And then there is hedonistic Harry, lad about
town, party animal, played with a rakish air by Richard Glaves, that is
until Harry met not Sally in this case but Jess, a Republican left
leaning art student from Purley, and falls in love. Lucy Phelps gives her Jess a strange mix of
defiance and vulnerability, a Cinderella to Harry’s Prince, yet perhaps
they both know, in the end, Cinderella was just a fairy tale. Flitting around in the background is the King’s
right hand man, private secretary James Reiss, played by Dominic
Jephcott. One is left to question where his loyalty lies, to the king,
or to the crown or to himself. There is a strangely
moving moment when Harry, escaped from the Palace, finds himself in a
kebab shop about to close and the bloke serving, played by
Parth Thak If this
were a Royal PR exercise than Charles would win hands down, our
sympathies lie with him all the way, helped by the fact no journalist
would support any Government interference in what appears in print – we
are, after all, only 33rd
in the World’s Press Freedom index and that is without new legislation.
William fares less well, betrayal never goes
down well in the opinion polls, while Kate might be the decisive voice
but she is the clear villain of the piece; Playboy Harry first finds
some redemption but ultimately find his calling and loses any sympathy
gained in one final speech when he is revealed as never being one of the
people but just another one of them. The first half is believable the second less so
in that political unrest and constitutional crisis would go largely
unnoticed outside Westminster unless it clashed with X-Factor or
Strictly Come Dancing, but it is still an interesting proposition and,
despite being fiction, raises many thoughtful contemporary issues from
Freedom of the Press to the role of the monarchy in a democracy. Whether
you agree with Bartlett’s view of future history hardly matters, this is
a gripping political thriller of our times in its own right. Bartlett’s script is very Shakespearesque, much
in blank verse, and indeed there are obvious elements drawn from the
likes of Hamlet, we even have the ghost of Diana telling both Charles
and William they will be the greatest king ever, along with hints of
Macbeth, Lear and the Henrys, with Harry a latter-day Prince Hal. It is at times witty,
at times wonderfully funny but most of all it is a riveting play, a
what if
par excellence with some clever twists along the way. Rupert Goold’s
direction keeps everything tense and under control on a splendid set
from Tom Scutt, an exposed brick roundhouse with a frieze of faces
illuminated whenever monarch or politician address the nation, with
scenes changed merely by Jon Clark’s clever lighting. A cast of 12 cannot be faulted in what is a
first class production; this is theatre pretty near as good as it gets.
To 19-09-15 Roger Clarke
08-09-15 King Charles III tours to Malvern Theatres 2-7 November.
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present
from Charles believes it is a dangerous restriction of the freedom of
the Press and asks the Labour Prime Minister, Mr Evans to reconsider
some of its provisions, sowing the seeds of a clash that will threaten
not only Charles but the monarchy itself.
erar,