SCHILLER’S play ‘Mary Stuart’ is the next Ilkley Playhouse production. This adaptation by Mike Poulson is a series of increasingly complicated plots, double-crosses and deception ending in chaos, confusion and death!

Schiller portrays two powerful women, cousins, both flawed, both queens, both with understandable claims to the crown of England, who struggle at the heart of a no-win plot of weakness, manipulation, madness, cowardice, infidelity, avoidance, treachery, suspicion, attempted murder and religious conflict.

The play covers the last few days of Mary’s life and the action moves between Fotheringay Castle in Northamptonshire where Mary was kept under house arrest and the court of Elizabeth in London. Most of the characters in the play are based on real historical figures and the action is historically accurate apart from the meeting between Mary and Elizabeth which Mary asked for but which Elizabeth never agreed to.

Under the orders of Queen Elizabeth 1st, Mary Stuart remained under house arrest for nineteen years until a tribunal found her guilty of treason and she was executed at Fotheringay Castle, aged forty-four.

Friedrich von Schiller (1759-1805) is one of the giants of European Theatre. Inspired by Shakespeare he turned to history to explore themes of personal freedom and happiness in the face of the pressures of national priorities and political reality. For many years in the English speaking world a Schiller stage production was a rarity. The very successful 2005 production of Don Carlos, starring Derek Jacobi marked a new interest in Schiller the dramatist. (That adaptation was by Mike Poulton who created the version of Mary Stuart that we are staging.) Mary Stuart and Don Carlos have become staples of the theatre repertoire in Britain and the USA.

Mike Poulton began writing for the theatre in 1995. He has translated and adapted plays by Ibsen, Chekhov, Turgenev, Strindberg, Euripides and Schiller. His version of Turgenev's Fortune's Fool won the Tony Award for Best Play on Broadway in 2002, and his adaptation of Schiller's Don Carlos was nominated as best play for the 2006 Olivier awards He has adapted The Canterbury Tales and Morte d'Arthur for the Royal Shakespeare Company. His adaptations of Hilary Mantel's novels Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies staged by the RSC at Stratford, London and Broadway were nominated for Tony and Olivier awards.

Mary Stuart runs from November 4 - 14, 7.30pm in the Wharfeside Theatre

The line-up for the next Stagefright Comedy Club ( Saturday, October 24, 8pm) has now been finalised. Joining Jack Carroll , Archie Kelly, Alex Hylton and Jo Smiles, is Chris Brooker compering what should be a very lively evening.

All tickets are available from the Box Office tel: 01943 609 539 or online : www.ilkleyplayhouse.co.uk