Helen Mirren Once Again Plays The Queen; Writer Reveals All The Secret Dish
A new play called “The Audience,” by Peter Morgan, will begin performances next month in London. In it, Helen Mirren (pictured), will once again play Her Majesty, as she did in her Oscar-winning performance in the movie “The Queen,” which Morgan also wrote. This article gets Morgan to divulge a few details about the new play, in which the subject of HM’s weekly audiences with her Prime Ministers — from Winston Churchill in the 1950s to David Cameron today — is explored. A few of my favorite fun facts from the story: 1) Mirren, who is 67, will play
the Queen at all ages, beginning with the age of 25. (This is absurd, and makes the constant complaining of Streisand, 70, as “Gypsy”‘s Mama Rose, in her 40s, seem a mild offense by comparison); 2) “The Audience” will pay special attention to the Queen’s relationship with PM John Major, who was appointed as guardian to Princes William and Harry following the death of Princess Diana; 3) For all you royal watchers who think the Queen has been fonder of her Labour prime ministers than her Tory prime ministers: not quite true, at least according to Morgan. 4) For all of you who think the Queen’s audiences with the PMs are private, so isn’t Morgan making it all up? Nope, because Tony Blair is just the most recent PM to reveal in his memoirs a bit of what he and HM talked about. The most amusing quotation from playwright Morgan is when he is asked about Major’s role in trying to save the marriage between Prince Charles and Princess Diana in the early 1990s. Alluding to their residences, Morgan says, “I think he found the factionalism of Kensington and St James’s Palaces harder to resolve than the conflict in Bosnia.†I’ll bet.
