For the final night of the 2017 Easter Festival of Full Length Plays, Garden Suburb Theatre brought to us their interpretation of The Regina Monologues by Rebecca Russell and Jenny Wafer. This very clever play brings the lives of Henry VIII’s six wives to the modern day in separate but intertwined monologues. Catherine of Aragon is now Cathy (Rachel Berg); Anne Boleyn, Annie (Jemima Lane); Jane Seymour, Jane (Bryony Taylor); Anne of Cleves, Anna (Fiona White); Kathryn Howard, Katie (Freya Carroll) and Katherine Parr, Katherine (Trudi Dane). They tell of their lives married to this man including betrayal, affairs, miscarriage and childbirth through both comic and tragic speeches.
Garden Suburb Theatre produced a strong ensemble of players, all who really inhabited their roles and were line assured throughout. There were smooth movements in between monologues and there was a lovely stillness in the characters who weren’t talking. They managed to do the shifts from humour to darkness very effectively indeed.
Berg’s Cathy was exceptional, very believable throughout with great eye contact with the audience, good comic timing and lovely physicality. Berg really understood every line and brought out all of the humour and hurt in her speeches. Lane’s Annie had good attitude and characterisation, dramatic posture and fantastic comedic delivery in her lighter speeches. Taylor’s Jane was a strong performance with good facial expressions showing a very bright and joyful side coinciding against the opposing labour scene and the despair of the final speeches. White’s Anna had a memorable moment when she revealed her big secret as she had created mystery from the beginning. Carroll’s Katie was very powerful and heart-wrenching, she found all the nuances in the speeches effectively portraying the abuse of the character, and she drew in the audience immediately. Carroll had great facial expressions and a lovely tone of voice, which made for an innocent and touching performance. Dane’s Katherine had a strong presence on the stage with great diction. Dane found every ounce of humour in all her lines and held her moments effectively.
Garden Suburb Theatre’s production was crafted extremely well with the thought and feelings of each character totally understood and effectively portrayed. The emotional shifts were successfully handled provoking the correct response in the audience throughout the piece with a very effective balance between the light, comic moments and the dark, tragic lines. The movements and positions were all choreographed well and the final reactions to the ring at the end of the play were brilliantly depicted, each reaction matching the personalities of the characters.
There was a lovely, full set and Garden Suburb Theatre used all the breadth and width of the stage, dressing it with well thought through furnishings. They had a great costume concept, each of the players’ costumes reflected the character’s personalities. The lighting added another dimension to the production effectively segregating the spaces around the stage and there was a good use of spotlights to concentrate the audience’s focus.
Robert Meadows, last week’s adjudicator, had the following to say about the performance: “I was impressed with how the production shaped our attitudes towards the six wives. We were encouraged to feel a variety of emotions as a result of the shaping of the action by the director and through the quality of performance work. Properties and costume were other strong features of this memorable final night play.”
Garden Suburb Theatre’s production of The Regina Monologues was exquisitely interpreted with very effective portrayals of the six wives’ personalities and brilliant characterisation from all six performers. There was evidence of a very strong acting team all the way through the play and Garden Suburb Theatre’s performance was a powerful ending to our festival week.
- Megan Rossiter, MADF Roving Reporter