8 /10 1 Votes
5/5 The Telegraph Original language English Playwright Peter Morgan Place premiered Gielgud Theatre | 3/5 The Guardian Written by Peter Morgan First performance 15 February 2013 Composer Paul Englishby | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Date premiered 15 February 2013 (2013-02-15) Setting Buckingham Palace Balmoral Castle Characters Queen Elizabeth II, Winston Churchill Similar Skylight, The Curious Incident, Frost/Nixon, On the Twentieth Century, Handbagged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The audience with helen mirren live clips from the play
The Audience is a play by the British playwright and screenwriter Peter Morgan. The play centres on weekly meetings, called audiences, between Queen Elizabeth II, played by Dame Helen Mirren, and her prime ministers and premiered in the West End in 2013, at the Gielgud Theatre. A Broadway production opened in 2015, also starring Mirren. A West End revival played in London in 2015 starring Dame Kristin Scott Thomas in the lead role.
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National theatre live the audience starring helen mirren in australian cinemas from july 5
Overview
The Audience is centred on the weekly audiences given by Queen Elizabeth II to prime ministers from her accession in 1952 to the present day. Three Prime Ministers are omitted from the play; Harold Macmillan, Sir Alec Douglas Home and Edward Heath are not featured. Tony Blair originally did not feature in the play, but was added when the play transferred to Broadway, replacing James Callaghan who was excluded from subsequent productions. Advice regarding the political and historical content of the weekly audiences was provided by Professor Vernon Bogdanor (Emeritus Professor of Government at Oxford University) the former Tutor of David Cameron, Prime Minister from 2010 until 2016.
Production history
The Audience is written by British playwright and screenwriter Peter Morgan. Its premiere production opened in the West End at the Gielgud Theatre on 15 February 2013, with its press night on 5 March. The play featured Dame Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth II; the actress had played the same role in the 2006 film The Queen, which was also written by Morgan. The play was directed by Stephen Daldry, with design by Bob Crowley, lighting design by Rick Fisher, sound by Paul Arditti, music by Paul Englishby and video design by Ian William Galloway. A typical West End performance ran two hours and 30 minutes, including one interval.
Following the death of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who is featured during the play's run, playwright Peter Morgan made a speech to the audience to mark her passing. The production was broadcast live to cinemas as part of National Theatre Live on 13 June 2013. The initial broadcast broke the record for most people watching a production live since the scheme began, with nearly 80,000 people watching in the UK and 30,000 people in North America. Further encore screenings were later broadcast.
The play began a limited Broadway engagement from 8 March to 28 June 2015, at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre, with previews from 14 February 2015. Helen Mirren reprises her role of Queen Elizabeth II in this production, alongside fellow original cast members Geoffrey Beevers, Michael Elwyn, Richard McCabe and Rufus Wright.
A West End revival began at the Apollo Theatre, opening on 5 May 2015, following previews from 21 April 2015, with Dame Kristin Scott Thomas as Queen Elizabeth II. For the 2015 production, the role of James Callaghan was removed to allow them to feature another former prime minister Tony Blair and the script was updated pending a General Election. Following the General Election on 7 May 2015, the scene featuring David Cameron meeting the Queen was updated to show Cameron had won a second term and showed the Queen asking him to form a Government. The Audience between Cameron and the Queen was changed several times over the 15 week run in the West End in keep up to date with current political events. After the general election results references were made to Nicola Sturgeon and the success of the SNP seats gained in Scotland taken from Labour. Other current events references made during the audience scene between the Queen and Cameron included the corruption scandal at FIFA and the Greek bailout debate known as "Grexit". During the last week of the run, a reference was made to newspaper articles displaying the Queen apparently making a Nazi salute in her youth and to the birthday of Prince George.
Fiona Reid assumed the role of the Queen in the 2017 Mirvish Productions mounting of the play at Toronto's Royal Alexandra Theatre. The Toronto cast included Paul Essiembre as Eden, Kate Hennig as Thatcher, Benedict Campbell as Brown, Kevin Klassen as Blair and Ben Carlson as Cameron.
In popular culture
The 'Traviata' model handbag by British designer Launer London received a surge in popularity and was subsequently re-issued by the brand following the use of one as a prop in The Audience both in the West End and on Broadway. It is the style often used by Queen Elizabeth II.
It is cited in the credits of the seventh episode of season 1 of the Netflix series The Crown. In the credits, the episode is stated as "inspired by the play "The Audience" by Peter Morgan and Produced by Playful productions LLP, Robert Fox LTD and Andy Harries."