Mary Stuart - Almeida / Tour

I was involved in a production of Mary Stuart last year - and I think it is a cracking play. But a lot comes down to the quality of the adaptation.

The idea of role-sharing/swapping is hardly new and doing it this way is probably not the best in terms of the audience. There is no way for certain that you can book to see the show both ways - which is missing a trick.

Will be interesting to see the rest of the casting for this as well - as Leicester and Burleigh need to be top notch as well for the drama to work.

I think they were scheduled mostly weren't they so you could pick but there may have been some occasional coin tossing? Isn't this how they did the Faust (sp?) at RSC recently although I think that would fit better with the play?

Maybe the Almeida figures it will sell out without punters double booking to see both ways?

I don't think it's showing off to be honest but It gives both of them chances to play each role and is probably quite fun for the audience as they don't know who they're going to get

The coin tossing idea was used in an Akybourn play at NT once. Michael Gambon had a two-headed coin made which he used to ensure he and Stephen Moore had less work to do.

A Friends membership is my plan, for sure.

As for the role swaps mentioned above, for Old Times, it was all scheduled bar the Thursday evening performance, which was decided by a coin toss. For the RSC Faustus, it is decided by both actors striking a match at the same time at the very start of the play. Whoever's match blows out first remains on stage to play Faustus, the other leaves the stage to change into the Mephistopheles costume.

Personally, I am VERY excited for this. Lia Williams blew my mind so comprehensively in Oresteia I would now watch her in anything. And I'll probably book more than twice, to increase my chances of seeing it played both ways, so you could argue that it's a crafty decision on the Almeida's behalf to get more than 2 bookings out of people :-).

Press night delayed by a week due to 'coin-flip complications'! (According to The Stage)

Rock, Paper, Scissors would be easier and cheaper than using a coin....

Gosh, I'm green with envy!

Presumably because the random element is considered integral to this production.

The coin toss isn't win or lose, is it? Aren't they equivalent roles? Surely a "winning" actor doesn't shout: "Bags I play [favourite character] tonight!", do they?

It is a meta-theatrical conceit to underline that there is a some sort of equivalence between the characters. The famous one was the John Barton Richard II mentioned above (in production photos I have seen of that Richard and Bolingbroke also look identical, same costume, same RSC beard). It has not been done that often - Frankenstein, Dr Faustus, this .... any more ? The one I'd like to see, which occurred to me at the Almeida production, is Vanya and the Professor swapping, there are all sorts of interesting implications if you regard those two as fundamentally similar.


More of a gimmick in my view is the Ayckbourn approach of having the play itself modified by a chance occurrence.

I remember a friend seeing Becket where Jacobi swapped with someone (want to say Robert Powell or Lindsay? But not sure that's right) Someone will know the details.