The Audience

Going to your local cinema for a live sports broadcast made money for the promoters. As did a pre-recorded as-live rock concert or a New York opera production. Then came straight theatre events. The future arrived bigtime when The Audience went live from Shaftesbury Avenue to the UK and North America on 13 June.

Starring Helen Mirren who reprises and expands her Academy Award winning performance in The Queen, the play was about to finish its 3-month run at the 1000-seater Gielgud Theatre. The live broadcast reached 110,000 extra paying customers, 3 months worth at one hit. Now the rollout of “repeat screenings” reaches Australia, New Zealand and 23 other countries.

Theatre fans — and particularly fans of the always astonishing Dame Helen — who now have zero chance of seeing her Olivier Award performance live shouldn’t miss this up-close record of her still, convincing, detailed and heartfelt portrait. Unlike in the movie, this narrative covers 60 years, and we see Mirren’s Elizabeth first as an eager young woman, then at many stages through to a frail 87 year old dozing off when her current Prime Minister gets a little boring.

It’s really worth catching this triumph of acting technique, and watching her do some impressively fast costume, wig and makeup changes. For Peter Morgan’s play (he also wrote the screenplay for The Queen) dips in and out of the reign, choosing to develop drama via themes and issues, rather than by strict chronology.

It’s a static play, a pageant of two-person conversations, recorded here mainly in wide shots and limited close-ups. Of course the actors can’t ‘go for another take’, so there are a few fluffs and minor mistakes, even from La Mirren.

The set and costumes (Bob Crowley), lighting (Rick Fisher) and music (Paul Englishby) are terrific. No one gets anything like Mirren’s 99% stage time, but there are some excellent character sketches from (of the parade of Prime Ministers) Edward Fox as Winston Churchill, Paul Ritter as John Major and Richard McCabe as Harold Wilson; and (of the Buckingham Palace staff) Geoffrey Beevers as the main linking Equerry and Charlotte Moore as the Queen’s much loved nanny. Nell Williams impresses as a growing young Princess Elizabeth, trying to make sense of her highly restricted destiny. There’s even a couple of dashing corgis.

Frank Hatherley

Images feature Paul Ritter as Joh Major, Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth II and Haydn Gwynne as Margaret Thatcher. Photographer: Johan Persson.

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