This is a very personal, intimate show and starts so. Queen Elizabeth I (Tammy Meneghini) invites you into her bedchamber as she has dismissed her maids so she can be alone with us, the audience. She immediately establishes a rapport with the audience, giving one a mischievous eye, inviting him to pick up her dropped book by looks alone.
She begins to recount her life often referring to drafts of original letters and speeches and quoting Shakespeare. During the entire performance, she co-ordinates undressing for bed as she performs, revealing herself physically as well as emotionally and mentally. Meneghini has the audience in the palm of her hand from the off. The play includes many famous speeches such as “I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a King of England too.” The way Meneghini delivers them brings history to life.
Levin gives an intimate insight into the queen as a woman and ruler, a woman of extraordinary talents, speaking four languages. At only 12, she gave her father, Henry VIII, Catherine Parr’s book Prayers or Meditation, which she had translated into Italian, French and Latin. Her mother, Anne Boleyn, was beheaded before she was three. Fame, grief, love, frustration, difficult decisions; a woman in a man’s world. Drama and maritime achievements flourished in her reign, and her subjects enjoyed stability; a very full 70 years. There was a strange, yellow light projected over the actor from a gobo, puzzling.
I was fortunate enough to meet the playwright, Carole Levin, who had just arrived from Nebraska where she is a professor at the University and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. She told she had “been fascinated about Queen Elizabeth I since I was a child and have devoted much of my life to her and her times in teaching and research.” She has also published a number of books about her. She wrote this play especially for Tammy as a great admirer, for she “wanted to do something that was historically accurate and providing some fascinating aspects that were not a woman in a man’s world necessarily well-known and let people know more about not only Elizabeth as queen but Elizabeth as a woman.” She certainly has achieved that.
A faultless production in every way, beautifully written, superbly performed, going through a huge range of emotions effortlessly, Meneghini delivers a sexy, emotional powerful queenly performance, well directed (Lynn Nichols) and staged, also well-designed costume and props. This is an absorbing 55 minutes, which holds you from the first moment. Whether you are a history fan or not, this is definitely an unmissable show.