Swive [Elizabeth]
Sam Wanamaker Theatre, London

WATCHING any piece of theatre on the night of a general election is an odd experience. But watching one which shows us a thoughtful, philosophical and astute ruler while the country elects Boris Johnson is particularly jarring.

Ella Hickson’s Swive, tightly directed by Natalie Abrahami, is an epic and sweepingly poetic engagement with the life of Elizabeth I, with her childhood, imprisonment, ascension to the throne, leadership challenges and desires all under scrutiny.

Despite the epic historical scale, a sense of intimacy prevails, with the settings predominantly domestic. Four actors play nine roles, with Nina Cassells as the princess and Abigail Cruttenden as the queen and it is abundantly clear that in both these stages of her life Elizabeth’s power is bound up with her sex.

Where Cassells subtly draws out the pointed fear of an uncertain future, Cruttenden gives us a woman confident but frustrated. Both are at pains to show Elizabeth as an intelligent woman, proud of her education or fearful that it will be taken away from her, who’s caught up in a conflict between her singular power and her desires.

Ella Hickson’s clever script, while steeped in historical detail, confronts us with the reality that history itself might be used for political purposes. At the beginning of the evening, Cruttenden describes the cosy candle-lit space of the Sam Wanamaker theatre as “bullshit” before revealing the full glory of its plywood-heavy set design.

This explicit acknowledgement that history and representations of power are created and constructed makes Swive no simple panegyric to Elizabeth. Towards the end, a washerwoman asks her if she understands that the jewels on one of her crowns could feed people for weeks. “It’s just a hat, it’s all just hats, isn’t it?” she points out.

It’s a striking line, puncturing so many of the philosophical ideas around power that have both suppressed and elevated Elizabeth and, in a moment in which the electorate have voted for bluster and pomp over the protection of the vulnerable and the structures binding society together, it seems endlessly and depressingly resonant.

Runs until February 15, box office: shakespearesglobe.com
Katherine M Graham