Vivat! Vivat Regina!
Pusey House Garden, Oxford,
24th June - 2nd July
CAST
Elizabeth - Krysia Ochyra
Cecil - David Etherington
Walsingham - Geoffrey Moore
Davison - Gavin Graham
Dudley - Robin Seavill
Bishop - Michael Clarke
Prisoner - Michael Clark
Mary - Gail Fincham
Nau - Lawrence Jordon
Rizzio - Keith Hill
De Quadra - Martin Tyrell
Morton - John Sericold
Darnley - Douglas Armstrong
John Knox - Iain Heggie
Brewer - Keith Hill
Tala - Nicholas Brennan
Ormiston - Danny McNamarra
Ruthven - Keith Goldsmith
Bothwell - Randall Stevenson
DIRECTED BY
Annie Anderson
PS
We did this in Pusey House Gardens on a specially imported stage that had a fiercer rake than perhaps anyone had anticipated. During the baptism scene one afternoon the font fell forward and splashed the front row as if they were parents at a school swimming event. Stage management sought to overcome the problem by weighing it down with rocks. That night the font collapsed again, this time not only splashing the front row but also pelting them with boulders. I think in the end we gave up and decided to have Mary, Queen of Scots’s son grow up Muslim instead.
While there was fun to be had – some of us used to relieve our boredom waiting to go on by spoonerising the play’s title, for instance – personally I was conscious of an air of melancholy throughout the run. I knew this was going to be the very last production I was ever going to be in at Oxford, my favourite place in the whole world. Finals were over and my first London job beckoned, but I had a sneaky feeling neither of them were going to bring me much joy. (I was right on both counts.) But even at such a potentially low point, there was one high spot.
Wardrobe had supplied me with a shapeless velvet hat which I could do nothing with, but that term fate had also supplied me with a fabulous girlfriend called Maggie on whom this stupid thing just happened to look fabulous. Not only that, one afternoon in the dressing room she cheekily plonked this hat on, sat down at the piano in the corner, and started playing Bach. She had been so modest I didn’t know until that moment that she could read music, let alone play so well. There may have been troubles ahead, but for the moment, listening to her sitting there with my stupid hat perched like a halo on her angelic head, I was just wise enough to count my blessings while I could. I’d had a good run, better than many, and there would be other worlds to conquer. I just didn’t yet have the faith in myself to recognise that fact.