Elizabeth was played by two actors: Nina Cassells as Princess Elizabeth and Abigail Cruttenden as Queen Elizabeth. There were only four actors in the play and three of them played more than one role. This was particularly impressive of the two women, who played an assortment of very different characters. Abigail Cruttenden played Catherine Parr and Mary I as well as Elizabeth.
Swive presented the teenage Princess Elizabeth as innocent but astute; anxious and highly religious. Her religiousness had an OCD-like quality involving repeating the same prayer over and over again. As Queen, she remained astute and anxious, and had a nervous face-touching tic . She was also formidable and ruthless - she carried out a horrible act that made me lose sympathy for her and which I'm not sure has a basis in reality - no, not ordering the death of Mary Queen of Scots! - something involving a fork. In Swive, Elizabeth is very clear about not ordering her cousin's death.
Elizabeth's aloneness came over strongly - the extent to which she had to figure everything out by herself, and rely on herself alone - especially after the death of her step-mother Catherine Parr, when Elizabeth was fifteen. (Although that relationship had soured somewhat after Catherine's husband's predatory behaviour towards Elizabeth.)
Elizabeth's desire to remain single and inevitable lack of an heir was a major theme. Her argument with Mary I, in which she criticised her half-sister for giving her power away to her husband was one of my favourite scenes. She had to be careful about what she said, given her and Mary's respective positions, but she couldn't resist giving Mary her honest opinion about Mary's marriage, her phantom pregnancy and religious impositions. Another of my favourite scenes was Elizabeth's argument with William Cecil (Michael Gould) about whether she would have the title 'Supreme Head of the Church of England' (her father's title, which she wanted) or 'Supreme Govenor', which she ended up having because it was considered more suitable for a woman.
The lighting - candlelight - was used to good effect in this play - it was made an integral part of the story.
I felt somewhat short-changed because Swive wasn't a full-length play and I hadn't known this in advance. It was a single act of around an hour and twenty minutes. I felt like I'd only just properly got into it before it was wrenched abruptly from me. My other issue was the occasional jarring insertion of modern language. The characters kept saying 'OK'.
Next: Anne with an E - yes, it's a Netflix series rather than a play. It's going to be a bit like living during the Commonwealth for the foreseeable future theatre-wise.
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