Theatre / Mary Stuart, adapted by Kate Mulvany after Friedrich Schiller, directed by Luke Rogers. At ACT Hub until August 3. Reviewed by JOE WOODWARD

Contemporary Australian audiences might well have difficulty in navigating the heightened dramas by pre-20th century European writers such as Friedrich Schiller. 

Kate Mulvany’s incisive adaptation of Schiller’s Mary Stuart provides both cast and spectators the opportunity to experience something of the grandeur and high themes of such a dramatic work. 

Chaika Theatre’s production directed by Luke Rogers is set on a Profile Stage with the audience privy to the intimate workings of the characters and situations. 

This production choice alone has provided a strong validation of Mulvany’s shape of the work. The actors were up to the task of sharing their character performances with a captivated audience to provide an enriching engagement with a highly conceptual and polemical text.

The complex relationship between Queen Elizabeth I and Mary Stuart sat well on the cross-like raised stage designed by Kathleen Kershaw. The religious imagery provided by simple props, costumes and textual referencing established the mood of essentially violent times within the cultural mindset of the era. 

Steph Roberts (Mary Stuart) and Karen Vickery (Elizabeth) provided strong pivotal performances within this structure. 

All cast members played their roles with physical dexterity and very audible vocal deliveries. Cameron Thomas especially managed a beautifully nuanced characterisation. His depiction of Paulet, the Jailor, was a significantly humanised presentation in a world that seemed to offer very little recognition of individual humanity. 

Tragedy production and heightened drama presentation in Australia sometimes struggle to find the balance between accessibility and the many shades of humanity depicted in texts. 

Tragedy has defeated many Australian theatre companies: including Bell Shakespeare. There is something so alienating about depictions of power and manipulation; it is so often reduced to easy familiarity. Mary Stuart provided real challenges in its depictions of people so filled with their sense of power and holding on to it. The production used ritual and some contradictory moments to elicit something of this power. 

Karen Vickery’s dialectical use of a forced smiling queen in the face of challenges was one such strategy used to create this sense of her being a powerful “queen”. Vickery’s ability to really draw from deeper energies and focused attack gave the production moments of real power. 

The ACT Hub and the production of Mary Stuart provides an opportunity to experience something of the very essence of power play and how it makes for exciting and challenging theatre.