In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column I have next to nothing good to say about the Broadway transfer of The Audience. Here’s an excerpt.
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No Broadway season is complete without at least one glittering piece of sucker bait for Anglophiles. In order to go over big at the box office, the show in question needs to meet as many as possible of the following specifications: The production must have originated in England and should be visibly costly. In addition, the subject matter must be exclusively and conspicuously English. Finally, the cast should feature at least one English actor who is popular on this side of the Atlantic. Do all four of these things and you can’t miss…
Seasoned theatrical handicappers are thus betting on Peter Morgan’s “The Audience,” which has just transferred to Broadway from London’s West End, to finish in the big money. Not only does it star Helen Mirren, but she plays Queen Elizabeth II, and Mr. Morgan’s cast of characters also includes such luminaries as Winston Churchill (Dakin Matthews) and Margaret Thatcher (Judith Ivey). What’s more, the subject matter is so determinedly English that the printed program contains a supplementary flyer identifying the supporting characters for the benefit of historically challenged ticket holders: “Winston Churchill, inspirational statesman, writer, orator and leader who led Britain to victory in World War II.”
Mr. Morgan, who previously wrote “Frost/Nixon” and the screenplay for “The Queen,” specializes in slick confections that are shallowly rooted in matters of fact. This one arises from a premise stated with elephantine simplicity in the opening lines: “Every week the Queen of the United Kingdom has a private audience with her Prime Minister. It is not an obligation. It is a courtesy extended by the Prime Minister to bring Her Majesty up to speed. The meeting takes place in the Private Audience Room located on the first floor of Buckingham Palace.” Aaaand…we’re off! The play consists of made-up portrayals of Queen Elizabeth’s private audiences with eight of her real-life prime ministers, starting with Churchill and ending with David Cameron (Rufus Wright), the present occupant of the post….
What we have here, in short, is an actor’s tour de force, a piece of richly appointed servant porn in which Ms. Mirren changes age and costume instantaneously and in full view of the audience. In the first scene she’s 69 years old, then 25, and so on and so forth. Each scene is a vignette, yet another piece in the great mosaic that is British history, and the fact that the queen’s audiences with her prime ministers always take place behind closed doors allows Mr. Morgan to let his imagination run rampant, there being no primary source material on which he can base his yarn-spinning.
It’s a clever enough premise save for one incapacitating flaw, which is that “The Audience” has no plot. Yes, we watch Queen Elizabeth growing up, and Ms. Mirren impersonates her (as she did in “The Queen”) with total plausibility all along the way. But the result is a stately pageant, not a conflict-driven play, and if you aren’t more than casually familiar with postwar British history, you’ll likely find some of the scenes numbingly hard to follow….
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Read the whole thing here.