Review: Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off

Stylish production brings the sixteenth century to life.


Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off (Liz Lochhead) was a stylised, interesting production under the direction of Alexander Gillespie. Set in Venue One, it showed the two sides of the struggle between Mary, Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I culminating in, as the title suggests, the execution of Mary.

On entering Venue One, the audience was confronted with the sound of a violin, taking the audience back to sixteenth century Britain and setting the tone for the play. Next thing we knew, La Corbie (Becca Schwarz) was bursting out of a trunk in the centre of the stage. La Corbie has got to hold the play together, taking the audience through the events of the play and Schwarz carried the role out with aplomb. Schwarz’s Scots accent was impressively executed and maintained throughout. Despite the fact La Corbie didn’t leave the stage over the course of the play, I would have liked to have seen more of a presence from the character over the events of the play.

The two women at the heart of the production, Mary (Shonagh Smith) and Elizabeth (Beth Robertson) were both played superbly. Lochhead’s script demands that the actors playing both Mary and Elizabeth play not only these characters, but also transition into their respective maids, a challenge both Smith and Robertson tackled well. The transitions between the accents – ranging from French Scots to an accent bordering on Received Pronunciation – were well executed particularly as the play progressed.

John Knox (Neil Christy) was an assured performance, although I think the character would have been improved by having him as more overbearing earlier in the piece. The confrontation between Bothwell (Michael Laird) and Knox was excellently played, the religious verve of Knox utterly clear in Christy’s portrayal. The Chorus, from which the characters other than Mary, Elizabeth and La Corbie came, was generally well utilised – the movement and marching en mass allowed the Chorus to take on a threatening tone, useful as the play reached its conclusion – although Gillespie could have used them even more throughout

The aesthetic of the play too was well executed with interesting use of tech – particularly lighting – in order to create a sense of tension to run throughout the piece. It was this use of tech which allowed the play to take on a striking, memorable dimension, particularly as the piece progressed. It was the penultimate scene, the death of Ricco (Mattia Mariotta, who was particularly strong in the Chorus scenes) which made the most effective use of the lighting, using shadows to show the execution.

Although there was much to praise from a directorial and production point of view, the major problem with the production was that of volume. Despite the fact I was sitting in the third row from the front, a combination of the unforgiving acoustics of Venue One, the Scots accents, blocking which didn’t help with the acoustics, and a lack of projection in some moments meant some of the humour of the early scenes quite simply wasn’t heard. With a play in which the language is as rich as Lochhead’s, I would have liked to have heard more of it!

An interesting, engaging and exciting production, Gillespie managed to create the world of sixteenth century Britain effectively in Venue One. The acting elevated the production beyond expectations, providing a production which fit perfectly into the On the Rocks theme of Heritage.