Perhaps it stirred memories of when, held close by the favoured Earl of Leicester, she’d revelled in the high, leg-exposing leaps of La Volta – not just a monarch, but a woman.
Dancing is something that Tom Sapsford does with brio, grace and what seems to be an intuitive expressiveness. So when, in the farthingaled guise of Good Queen Bess – face a white mask, framed by an elaborate ruff – Sapsford springs and capers with neat (bare) feet or glides into patterns of courtly steps, embellished with precise quirks of wrist or finger, then Regina is quite wonderful to watch. Even when, ornamental headdress discarded, he stands still so that projections can play across his face – affording us an image of the “public icon” and the individual, at odds, within – there’s enough to hold our attention.
However, the sequences where Sapsford lip-syncs to a voiceover culled from Elizabeth’s letters, or the writings of her contemporaries, pall all too quickly. In part, it’s the density of the spoken text, unrelieved by any action. In part, it’s the tone of Elizabeth McKechnie’s delivery which verges, unnervingly, on Margaret Thatcher.
And when a plaster bust replaces Sapsford centre-stage, despite the play of historical likenesses over it, the trundling on of yet more taped oratory is simply tedious. The welcome highpoints are Sapsford dancing, abetted by Agnes Dromgoole as the little girl/inner child who sails the model Armada fleet across the floor like toys.
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