Not easy being queen, but Mirren glows onstage
NEW YORK — It's frustrating enough to ponder the foibles of elected officials as an everyday citizen. Imagine if you were a constitutional monarch like the Queen of England, privy to dubious decisions made by your government but expected to endorse them.
This is the dilemma faced by Elizabeth II across the pond and, now, onstage at Broadway's Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre, where Peter Morgan's The Audience (*** out of four) opened Sunday, starring Helen Mirren as Elizabeth.
The actress and playwright have visited this turf before: Mirren won an Oscar playing the same role in the 2006 film The Queen, which featured a screenplay by Morgan, focusing on Elizabeth in the period following Princess Diana's death.
The Audience, which premiered in London, covers more ground, and paints a fuller and immensely endearing portrait of its central figure. The title refers to the weekly meetings Elizabeth has had with her prime ministers at Buckingham Palace. Given the length of Elizabeth's reign, the practice offers Morgan opportunity to have his heroine grapple with an array of personality types and political perspectives.
What resonates most deeply is Elizabeth's extraordinary grace and compassion with the leaders — all played superbly, under Stephen Daldry's robust, witty direction — and particularly with those who seem less comfortable in her presence, or socially awkward in general. She teases but ultimately reassures Dylan Baker's sweetly clumsy John Major, and is patient and encouraging with Rod McLachlan's bumbling, poignant Gordon Brown.
Elizabeth forms her closest bond in the play with the '60s and '70s social reformer Harold Wilson, who in his first meeting with her is contentious and gauche. Richard McCabe delivers a richly idiosyncratic, funny, soulful performance as Wilson — who at one point calls Elizabeth a "lefty at heart."
Morgan suggests much the same thing in several key exchanges. When Tony Blair pops up briefly in flashback (via Rufus Wright, later an excellent David Cameron) to make a case for 2003's invasion of Iraq, Elizabeth challenges him. In another scene, Michael Elwyn's tortured Anthony Eden pitches England's engagement in what would become the Suez Crisis of 1956, using an almost identical argument, and the queen expresses the same misgivings.
Morgan also makes much of reported tension between Elizabeth and Margaret Thatcher. The latter is drawn as such a heartless bigot that the character — icily played by Judith Ivey — borders on caricature.
But this Elizabeth also coolly defends the monarchy; and Mirren, with her usual intelligence and emotional insight, deftly reconciles her sense of entitlement with a deep humility and empathy. "Your ordinariness will be your greatest asset as a sovereign," Elizabeth tells her younger self (the touching Sadie Sink, who alternates with Elizabeth Teeter), in one of several scenes where their paths cross.
Ordinary's not a word you'd likely apply to the queen or Mirren, but who are we to argue?