Mary Stuart

Peter Oswald was born in England in 1965. His original plays include the verse plays 'Allbright' and 'Valadonama', and 'Fair Ladies At A Game Of Poem Cards', 'Augustine's Oak', 'Ramayana', and 'Sha Kuntala'. He has also adapted plays by Sophocles and Lorca. Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (1759-1805) ranks as one of the greatest figures in European drama and literature. That Verdi based four of his operas on Schiller's plays is not surprising (I masnadieri, Giovanna d'Arco, Luisa Miller, Don Carlos). Both men were deeply preoccupied with the battle for political freedon, projecting the moral victory of the doomed individual over the power of the immutable State as potent historical drama. Schiller's nobility of theatrical concept perfectly suited the energy and majesty of Verdi's scores. Yet in the English-speaking world Schiller's works are comparatively little known to theatregoers. The dedication of the renowned Glasgow-based Citizens' Company and the inspired decision to present the plays alongside Verdi's operas at the Edinburgh International Festival have gone a long way to remedy this neglect. The fifth play included in this edition was the source fro the opera by Donizetti (Maria Stuarda). Also translated for the Citizens' Company by Robert David MacDonald, Schiller's 'Mary Stuart' is acknowledged masterpiece.

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A story that recounts Mary, Queen of Scots' remaining days held captive in Fotheringay Castle. In scenes alternating between Mary's prison and Elizabeth's court at Westminster, it builds a picture of a tragic heroine rising above her suffering to gain in insight and spiritual depth.

Mike Poulton's highly acclaimed version of Schiller's Don Carlos was first staged in Sheffield in 2004 and then became a hit on the West End.

'If Shakespeare's historical dramas hold a mirror to our national virtues, Schiller presents a reflection that is rather less flattering.'
'In Mike Poulton's vibrant new version, England emerges as a paranoid state on high-security alert, where the detention of suspects does not bear very close scrutiny.'
'A lean new version by Mike Poulton, sets bare-knuckle rhetoric racing across the stage... It's brilliantly undiplomatic, a disastrous triumph.'
'A new version, by Mike Poulton, of Friedrich Schiller's 200-year-old masterpiece Mary Stuart...offers a rich dish to tempt audiences; spiced with sex, studded with intrigue and larded with betrayal... It's a mark of a good play that, although we know the tragic ending, the action still makes us hope it may be different this time.'