At the Royal National Theatre Lyttelton, London
If George III was famously insane, George IV’s place in English history has always been that of clown Prince. Indeed, the entire third series of the “Blackadder” British sitcom pokes fun at his buffoonery and penchant for women. The Royal National Theatre’s current production of Nick Stafford’s Battle Royal will do nothing for the reputation of the royal bigamist, and it is not entirely clear it will do that much for Stafford’s reputation either.
A bewildered woman placed into a court she knows nothing about who then goes on to win popular sympathy and support; a Crown Prince who loves a woman other than the official Princess of Wales: comparisons of the marriage of George, Prince of Wales (later George IV) and Princess Caroline of Brunswick, which is the central focus of Battle Royal, with the more recent Charles-Diana union are inevitable. Thankfully, Stafford’s script is quite rightly informed, but not overly influenced, by the present (although the playwright does slip in some clever jibing lines such as “the Tories are the natural party of government”).
Royal in-fighting, however, had far more import in the early 19th century than simply providing column inches for tabloids, and the incongruous collision between the petty demands of both sides and their meaning to the nation stands at the heart of the play. This is particularly true of Acts II and III, after George ascends to the throne and schemes to outmanoeuvre the queen he does not love. That the personal is political is a given: even servants plot actions to help the parties they favor.
It all culminates in the bitter (and hypocritical, given that George was already married to Maria Fitzherbert when he became engaged to Caroline) trial of Caroline on charges of adultery, a trial which the Caroline-George antipathy has acquired political implications (Whig-Tory ones, to be precise). Director Howard Davies, who previously directed the engaging The Iceman Cometh, should be credited for the quality of performances coaxed out of his actors. Zoë Wanamaker (last seen on Broadway as a stunning Electra) plays Caroline superbly. Her princess matures visibly, starting out as an awkward ingenue thrust into an unwanted marriage and finally coming into her own, winning the support of the public against her husband. (Even excepting the famous English love for underdogs, Wanamaker’s performance leaves the audience no doubt as to who to root for.) As the swaggering George, Simon Russell Beale exudes an upbringing of excess both lustful and gluttonous not only in his fine performance, but through his very stage appearance. Appetites will collide, and Stafford suggests that much of the conflict stems from the passionate nature of both royals (“Love and hate are not opposites. They share the same opposite – indifference”).
But while the first act conveys the squabbling with a deft comic touch, with wonderfully cutting verbal sparring between George and Caroline, the other two acts fails to fully engage. What unfolds is often sketched with too broad a brush, with characters reduced to mere symbols. Take, for instance, the scene where Caroline dances with members of the Italian peasantry, an easy stock image – think Kate Winslet with the yobbos in Titanic – meant to convey Caroline’s wild spirit and her comfort with the lower classes. Like the disastrous boat film, however, the dancing mostly seems to be merely a means of explaining the upper-class woman’s affection for her common lover, in this case the Italian Majocchi (an unimpressive Benny Young). Battle Royal is told on a rotating stage, but the frequent scene changes, while impressively smooth, give the play the impression of a story told solely in newsflashes, without any development in between. Small wonder the short intermission between Acts II and III was greeted with much checking of watches and slight murmurs of discontent.
The rotating stage does highlight that much of history seems to be merely moving in circles. The royal couple may reach detente at the end of Battle Royal, but the 3¼-hour play itself leaves us with no sense that we have seen something any different from the tawdry spectacles of fighting celebrity couples that make up our present-day news fodder. Fortunately, the spectacular performances of Wanamaker and Beale rescue Battle Royal from the plebeian. Still, all the walking both do onstage is apropos: this is a play that often remains downright pedestrian.
This review first appeared in The Harvard Crimson under the title “The Sadness of King George”.