Guardian News and Media/London


Helen Mirren: defining role

It was a defining role that won Helen Mirren an Oscar in 2007 and now the 65-year old actor is returning to the handbag and hairstyle of Queen Elizabeth in a new play exploring six decades of the monarch’s weekly meetings with British prime ministers.
The Audience, written, like The Queen, by Peter Morgan, will be directed by Stephen Daldry and sets out to explore her confidential meetings with PMs from Winston Churchill to David Cameron.
Her portrayal in The Queen of a meeting with Tony Blair, played by Martin Sheen, shortly after the death of Princess Diana was one of the most memorable scenes and this latest play is set to build on that but requires Mirren to portray a Queen from her twenties to her eighties.
“Her voice has changed, and I can use that – she had a terribly posh voice when she was young,” Mirren said.
“But now even the Queen, while she isn’t quite dropping the ends of her lines – though her grandsons do! - there’s a tiny bit of estuary creeping in there. I can use all that to signify the age range, and we’ll come up with other things.”
The drama aims to “chart the arc of the second Elizabethan Age”, say the promoters and will be staged at the Geilgud Theatre in March.
Mirren has said she was reluctant to get involved fearing she was becoming known as the actor who always plays the Queen.
The full cast is to yet to be announced.
Appearing on the US comedy show, Saturday Night Live she once said: “I’d like to say something for the record, although I played the Queen I am nothing like her. I may have been appointed Dame of the British Empire, but I am not all scones and teacups.”
Morgan’s last play, Frost/Nixon, also focused on a series of verbal encounters between the broadcaster David Frost and US president Richard Nixon after he had been impeached following the Watergate scandal. It was adapted into an Academy Award-nominated film.
Daldry, who spent the summer overseeing the opening and closing ceremonies for the Olympics and Paralympics, said the script was “funny and moving”.