Queens are no drag

>> Elizabeth I and Mary Stuart rock TNM

by AMY BARRATT

Watching Marie Stuart at Montreal's home to "the classics," Theatre du Nouveau Monde, I found myself thinking sadly, "Centaur would never do this." It isn't because English artists wouldn't be interested in this kind of stylized work, but because artistic directors would fear losing their subscribers. Whether that fear is legitimate or not is an argument for another time. I'll just say that while some theatregoers might be shocked and confused by this Marie Stuart, at least they wouldn't be bored.

When I first learned that the sultry Anne-Marie Cadieux would be playing Elizabeth I, my literal mind balked. We all have an image of the Virgin Queen: the high, browless forehead in the white face. Into that oval, director Brigitte Haentjens was proposing to cram the most quadrangular head in all of Canadian theatre. If this were Maxwell Anderson's Elizabeth the Queen, with authentic looking period costumes and decor, the actress's lack of physical resemblance would be a problem. But Italian playwright Dacia Maraini's Marie Stuart, especially as directed by Haentjens, is supremely uninterested in faithful recreation.

Cadieux's tall, thin body is exaggerated here by high heels and a long, tight, only vaguely Elizabethan dress, split in the front to reveal legs up to there. She has a larger than life presence and the voice of a Teletoon sorceress--potential handicaps in more naturalistic plays. But here in this commedia dell'dragshow, she is in her element. She strides up and down in her frizzy red wig declaiming lines like, "I have 3,000 pieces of clothing, and not a thing to wear!" and the audience loves it.

Haentjens' concept has exaggerated the contrasts between the two queens. As Mary, Queen of Scots, Pascale Montpetit--considerably shorter and slightly more womanly of figure than Cadieux--wears a black and red hoop skirt into which she occasionally disappears up to the chin. She represents all the sensuality that Elizabeth has forsworn. She is the fertile wife and mother in contrast to her barren, mannish cousin. My only complaint is that the physical differences have been so heightened here that it's difficult to believe the two are related, let alone perceive that each was a mirror to the other.

The set, by Anick La Bissonniere, is a wonder of the sort that francophone audiences are used to, but that anglophones never see outside the National Theatre School. In the back is a rounded metal structure that looks like a giant cutaway hoop skirt. Centre stage is a stack of large cogged wheels resembling the inner workings of a clock, and also suggesting that even these two powerful women are as cogs in a political machine: Mary will be killed and Elizabeth will give the order, against the prompting of her emotions.

There's been a lot of advance publicity for this show about how the characters of Elizabeth and Mary represent the career vs family dilemma of women today. I don't buy it. First of all, Mary, the "traditional woman" is the only one who comes across as human or sympathetic. Elizabeth, the "career-woman," true to the stereotypes of an earlier age, is portrayed as a monster. I don't believe we should extrapolate too much from that for our own lives.

I say you can't compare these two characters with ordinary women of today or any other day. They're Queens, ferchrissakes! And that's what makes them so endlessly fascinating.

To Dec. 18, then Jan. 4-9 at Theatre du Nouveau Monde, $18-33, 8pm; 866-8668