The Audience, Apollo Theatre, review: Kristin Scott Thomas' slicing comic subtlety is a treat

It’s a quick revival, and partial rewrite – Stephen Daldry’s production only premiered in 2013. Yet the timing was, apparently, coincidental – chosen to suit new lead, Kristin Scott Thomas. The pressure’s on, mind: Helen Mirren’s just been nominated for a Tony for her performance in the role on Broadway.

Scott Thomas is certainly regal: elegant, refined, chin lifted and nose looked down. This is a rather arch interpretation; the slightest pursing of lips may suggest one is amused, or deeply disapproving. She glides smooth and cool as marble through on-stage costume changes and time-shifts. Looks-wise, it’s not the most natural fit – Scott Thomas is just glamorous in a way even twinsuits over fatsuits for the later years can’t hide – but her slicing comic subtlety is a treat. Daldry’s direction is crisp, each short scene with each prime minister fully-realised, while also ricocheting off one another with precision.

It is not, we are frequently reminded, the Queen’s place to rule – but in Morgan’s imaginative portrait she exerts a shrewd influence. Indeed, his vision is a little fawning: wise and just and pious, her advice is always on the side of the angels… politically, at least; she’s more blinkered on the need for the Royal Family to modernise and spend less (it’s hard to have much sympathy when she says “that yacht means everything to me,” though I think we’re meant to).

The Queen (Kristin Scott Thomas) with Prime Ministers in The Audience Taking the long-view allows Morgan to find some wry parallels – in new scenes, her Maj cautions Tony Blair and Anthony Eden against military intervention in Iraq and Suez; both use the exact same warmongering words (“the right thing is to go in now, and go in hard”). An amusingly cruel bit of casting sees the same actor – Mark Dexter – play both Blair and David Cameron…

The cast are good all round: Gordon Kennedy’s lumbering Gordon Brown almost gets a round of applause he’s so familiar. And he’s not the only PM wracked with self-loathing. Almost all have their nerves, ticks and insecurities, put to good comic effect, but ultimately imbuing the show with compassion. They did seek out power, of course – whereas by introducing a reluctant childhood Elizabeth, we’re reminded (a little heavy-handedly) that the mournful regent had no choice.

The Queen (Kristin Scott Thomas) and Winston Churchill (David Calder) in The Audience The play is most enjoyable in the most extreme encounters – Morgan really goes for it in an icy battle of gilded wills between the Queen and Margaret Thatcher (a sonorous Sylvestra Le Touzel). Meanwhile, a surprisingly intimate relationship with Harold Wilson is based on mutual mockery across the class divide. Nicholas Woodeson plays Wilson as a chippy but jolly gnome, and their odd-couple friendship adds a core of true feeling in what could risk being a series of policy chats. Thankfully, Morgan’s imagination too audacious for that. Long live the audience!

To 25 Jul; theaudienceplay.com

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