When screenwriter Daisy Goodwin read that Prince Albert liked to choose Victoria\u2019s bonnets, she wondered: was this an act of domestic devotion, or of something darker? She explored the heady early years of their relationship in a TV drama \u2013 but this new play finds a tale of coercive control within the revered model marriage.<\/p>\n
We open at Windsor, in the dank tail of Victoria\u2019s long reign. Amanda Boxer\u2019s queen is a fretful owl in black bombazine, withering and imperious, if no stranger to self pity (\u201ca poor widow with no one to support me through all my tribulations\u201d). An inveterate diary-keeper, her children worry that the candid volumes will be published after her death.<\/p>\n
A slanted reflective ceiling hangs over the stage in Alex Berry\u2019s striking design, like memory\u2019s distorting mirror. Victoria describes her diaries as \u201cthe only place where I could be completely honest\u201d. But could she? Albert, after all, would sneak a peek \u2013 so, Goodwin speculates, the couple\u2019s rows and resentments stayed off the page.<\/p>\n
Jessica Rhodes\u2019 spirited young Victoria springs from the diaries\u2019 pages, giddily waltzing with Albert. Soon, however, he\u2019s trying to mould her character, suppress her joy: Rowan Polonski\u2019s lofty prince is all pique and amour-propre. He keeps her pregnant, much to her dismay (\u201cchildren are invincibly tedious\u201d), and muscles in on her royal duties: the speeches and papers, the tours of industrial Britain. He \u201cmade the monarchy so boring that no one was awake enough to start a revolution,\u201d scoffs his frustrated wife.<\/p>\n
Teasing becomes taunting, care becomes control and sexy times on the sofa become furious spats over Christmas presents (\u201cYou gave me a brooch made of teeth, Albert!\u201d). The relationship is coercive, yes, but perhaps also co-dependent: Victoria\u2019s panic keeps her obedient. A scene in which she reads from Jane Eyre signals the gothic fate which, Goodwin imagines, Albert might have planned for her.<\/p>\n
Although Goodwin\u2019s sympathies are clearly with the queen, Albert\u2019s dedication to the public good is what we now require of our royals \u2013 we don\u2019t pay solely to keep them in novels and marrons glac\u00e9s. Sophie Drake\u2019s fleet-footed production swerves the play\u2019s contradictions and repetitions, and unsettles a myth of stodgy royal contentment.<\/p>\n