The Observer from London, Greater London, England • 71

Sunday 24 March 1996 the Observer Review 13 the Arts MICHAEL COVENEY Enter the fiery queen Anna Massey's snap-shut Elizabeth meets the impetuosity of Isabelle Huppert in a new production of 'Mary Stuart' Elizabeth arrives with the hunt in the woods to find Mary momentarily released in the fresh air, Huppert twirling in a simple smock, her ginger hair cascading to her waist. Huppert 's radiance and beauty, usualhy -qualified on film with a naughty gleam in her eye and a seductive, insouciant swagger, here struggles through a jerk)', spasmodic vocal delivery and a puppeteerish set of gesticulations. But her talent triumphs; she swoons where she should, in the arms of her loyal Scottish attendant (Gillian Barge) and of the besotted Leicester the slimy villain of the piece, a treacherous lover to both queens and magnificently played by Tim Rgott-Smith en route to the scaffold. This Mary is a Catholic nostalgist on a taut rein of suppression that snaps in the central encounter, her vitriol pouring like molten lava over Elizabeth and sealing her Talent triumphant: Isabelle Huppert impassioned, volcanic and appropriately Gallic Schiller's Mary Stuart, one of the greatest of all romantic tragedies, is the tale of two queens separated by historic destiny but joined in their dramatic isolation. The Royal National Theatre, belatedly joining the 10-year-old Schiller revival sparted by the 1985 Glasgow Citizens' Theatre production of this sameplay, providesa handsome, though severely imperfect, rendition.

The play was first translated into English in 1800 by Joseph MeDish, almost as SchfflerfinishedwriiingiLTrrisimp poetic text informs Stephen Spender's 1958 version and prompted modem variations on Schiller's major imaginative invention the Fotheringay face-off between two monarchs who never met-by Maxwell Anderson and RobertTiolt The Grizens' translation, wittily corresponding to Schiller's metres and meanings, was made by Robert David Mac-Donald; the same version was used at Greenwich for Fiona Shaw's Man' in 1988. ieremy Sams has provided the RNT with a fluent, sometimes cheek7, text that has more prose than poetry. Inappropriately, it lacks majesty and a sense of sublimit)'. Schiller's rhythm is sacrificed for speed of exposition in the curious, symbiotic relationship between the virgin Queen and her imprisoned rival Over the last three days of her life in FomermgayCastiein 1587, Mary waits for Elizabeth to sign her death warrant in Westminster. Howard Davies's stately, tortured production is as much a battle of diction as.

ofwiR The snap-shut primness nf Anna Massey as Elizabeth, encased in sombre and bitter as a green lemon, is chfllingry contrasted vrith the untamed impetuosity of Isabelle Huppert, whose slink)' Frenchness defines Mary's Gallic origins and sexual history. Photograph by Neil Libbert Brief notes: Gay Sweatshop's twenty-first anniversary is mutedly. celebrated, with Philip Osment's The Undertaking (Northampton, Birmingham and Jack-sons Lane, London, in April) an indifferently performed tragi-comedy of Aids-age bereavement that takes time to achieve Osment's usual standards of complexity and passion. Bryan James Ryder's The Soldier's Song is a tepid first play set in a Falls Road Catholic home on the eve of the last ceasefire. Billy Carter is outstanding as an intelligent, guilt-ridden IRA recruit with a strong hint of O'Casey's poet-gunman, Donal Davoren.

Mary Stuart RNT Lyttelton, London SE1 (01 71 -9282252): TTxe Government Jrtpeo tor Theatr Clwyd, Mold (01352 755114); The Undertaking details, 01 71-242 1168; The Soldier's Tale Theatre Royal, Stratford East, London E15 (0181-534 0310) Mortimer, derived from the traitor Babihgton, is flamboyantly played by the excellent Ben Miles as an opportunist whose conversion to Rome is a spur to attempted rape. Everyone, apart from Mary, looks two ways at least in this play, and that heroic quality of single-minded righteousness is memorably projected by the most welcome Ms Huppert. As a result of local government reorganisation, the superb amenity of the Theatr CJwyd in Mold will close this summer unless 1 .5 million funding is raised after the abolition of Clwyd County Council on 31 March. The four successor authorities are vacillating. What to do? Write letters, campaign and mount a production of The Government Inspector, Gogol's satire of local authority finagling, incompetence and corruption.

The timing is either fatuous or inspira-tionally provocative. Surely the latter, had Romantic landscapes of Claude Lorraine and Caspar David Friedrich into a framework of architectural line-drawings of receding perspectives. This pleasing flatness is then complicated with clunky walls implying corridors of power. Where Sams's words fall short of dramatic emphasis, some rather offpurting music by the usually reliable Jason Carr drums up squeaky atmospherics. The roseate tints of sunset are distinctly naff, and there is a collapse of good taste at the end with Leicester ranting in a crassly miked void while the axe falls offstage and roseate floods to full bloody red.

The court intrigues are lucidly acted by Paul Jesson as an imposing Burleigh, Patrick Godfrey as the impatient Paulet and Colin Huriey as the unfortunate Davison who dithers over his duty with the warrant and is betrayed by his superior, then by his queen. Schiller's invented That heroic quality of single-minded righteousness is memorably projected by Ms Huppert fate. The Glasgow Mary of Ann Mitchell wasa devout, marmoreal anchorite in red stockings, while Fiona Shaw's was a furious Celtic martyr drenched in defiant rears. Huppert's tears come too, but more slowly, and her frank visage lights up with the free acceptance of her death. The costumes are more contemporary with Schiller than with the historic period or our own.

William Dudley's impressive, but ungainly, design inserts the POP Neil Spencer JAZZ: RECORD Dick Celtic Steppes Arts Council funded pleased to tell you Heckstall-Smith 's playing has been British jazz for at work for of originality The simple Celtic textures and tone ranges from airy none of that idle when the words uttered in the same Michael Bogdanov's production been a humdinger. But while there is an admirable European-style expansiveness to the staging smoke, clamour, cascading manuscripts, disproportionately scaled furniture and a finale where the real inspector arrives, astride a cage which sucks in the petty officials proceedings are generally mirthless and cumbersome. The wastrel clerk Khlestakov, mistaken by fawning bureaucrats for an inspector from St Petersburg, is played by Ian Hughes as a preening, acrobatic narcissist with a vocal mix of Derek Nimmo and Terry-Thomas. As everyone else, led by Glyn Houston's Mayor ('Women! That one word sums 'em is whining Welsh, the comic situation of political stasis in the sticks desperately fending off central government interference is at least given a lively chance. But the chance the play giveth the performance taketh away.

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