The trouble with Mary

"A SCOT, WHEREVER HE MAY BE, HAS always at least one moment of the day when he leans against the nearest object and thinks about her." So claimed celebrated Scottish author JM Barrie when discussing Mary Queen of Scots in 1928. This tendency, he mischievously declared, was the principal difference between a Scotsman and his English "friendly brother".

Times have changed, and most of us can now contemplate our ill-fated former monarch in an upright position. Yet it's surprising, given her iconic status in our heritage, that she's not more widely celebrated in prose and drama. At least 15 portraits survive from her lifetime, and many more have been derived from them, but there are only a handful of serious biographies, the most famous of which is Lady Antonia Fraser's Mary Queen of Scots, published in 1969.

To these may be added some fictional accounts, such as the Broadway hit Mary of Scotland, written in 1933 by the American playwright Maxwell Anderson and filmed in 1936 with Katharine Hepburn as Mary. Then there is Liz Lochhead's thrilling demotic drama Mary Queen of Scots Got her Head Chopped Off, first staged in 1987, of which more later.

In 2004, Scottish film director Gillies MacKinnon collaborated with veteran television dramatist Jimmy McGovern on the starry, blood-spattered BBC mini-series Gunpowder, Treason and Plot, which starred the young French actress Clémence Poésy as Mary, with Kevin McKidd as Bothwell, Gary Lewis as John Knox and Robert Carlyle as James VI.

Mary has also, of course, featured in dramas about her cousin and rival Elizabeth I of England, but she has usually been relegated to the shadows. The BBC's famous 1971 series Elizabeth R, starring Glenda Jackson, featured Vivian Pickles in the minor role of Mary - though this was followed the same year by a film, Mary, Queen of Scots, in which Jackson reprised her role, while Mary was played by Vanessa Redgrave.

Mary was banished entirely from Shekhar Kapur's Bafta-winning 1998 film Elizabeth. Nor was she a lead character in last year's two mini- series: Channel 4's splendid, Emmy-sweeping Elizabeth I (with Barbara Flynn as Mary) and the BBC's equally lavish but badly timed The Virgin Queen (with Joanne Whalley as Mary).

Now, though, the focus shifts to the 18th-century German dramatist Friedrich Schiller. His weighty historical drama Mary Stuart is about to be revived by the National Theatre of Scotland, the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow and the Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh in a new version by David Harrower, with Catherine Cusack as Mary and Siobhan Redmond as Elizabeth.

I say historical but, like Shakespeare before him, Schiller does not allow the facts to get in the way of a good story. Set during the final period of Mary's life, spent in English custody, it dramatises an encounter between Mary and Elizabeth, who in reality never met.

"It's intriguing," says Harrower. "It's a historical play, but at the same time it's totally imagined, because their meeting never took place. They did correspond for many years and were sorely aware of each other - it's quite astonishing, when you think about it, that they didn't meet."

For his part, Schiller described it as a "romantic tragedy". "I'm not sure about romantic," muses Harrower. "Did he mean Romantic with a capital R? Is it a tragedy? I'm not sure. Schiller was influenced by Greek drama, but it depends whether you think what happened to Mary was a tragedy or whether she had it coming to her. I've got a sneaking feeling that he idealised Mary and the villain is Elizabeth, but ironically that gives Elizabeth probably the more intriguing part.

"It reads like a thriller," he adds. "It's all going towards whether Mary's going to get her head chopped off or whether England is going to fall into the hands of Catholics. The stakes keep getting higher and higher."

THE PLAY WAS FIRST PERFORMED IN Germany in 1800. Mary was played to great plaudits by Henriette Hendel-Schutz, who claimed the cross she wore onstage had belonged to Mary herself. It was translated into English soon afterwards, but its most remarkable London production was at the Old Vic in 1958, in a translation by the English poet Stephen Spender.

It was introduced to modern Scottish audiences by the Citizens Theatre in 1986. Translated by the late Robert David MacDonald and directed and designed by Philip Prowse, it featured Ann Mitchell as Mary and Fidelis Morgan as Elizabeth. "It was a very theatrically simple production, with a bare stage," recalls Scotsman critic Joyce McMillan. "The simplicity of the imagery was stunning - especially when they let Mary out into the park and the darkness was illuminated with brilliant, pearl-grey light. I think Schiller felt that tension between Mary's expression of her sexuality and her political mission, and was able to express it through a female protagonist."

The following year marked the 400th anniversary of Mary's untimely death, and another version of the Schiller play appeared at the Edinburgh International Festival, translated by Joseph Mellish and directed by Frank Dunlop, with Hannah Gordon and Jill Bennett as the protagonists. But the theatrical event of the 1987 Festival was on the Fringe, where Liz Lochhead's vivid drama, Mary Queen of Scots Got her Head Chopped Off, was presented by Communicado, directed by Gerry Mulgrew.

"It's a fabulous story: 'twa queens on the wan green island'," says Lochhead, quoting from the prologue delivered by La Corbie - the crow-woman chorus who comments on the action in broad, colourful Scots. "And at that time there were a lot of issues about women in power. We had Thatcher on the throne - not that it's about Thatcherism or anything like that. It's not a play that's been outmoded.

"I remember my agent, Rod Hall, sent it to the National Theatre in the late 1980s when they were about to do a version of Schiller's Mary Stuart and he said to them, 'Why don't you do this in the small theatre at the same time?' And they answered back, 'Oh, we love this play; we think it's fantastic - but it's too Scottish for the National'."

The play is now regarded as a modern classic of Scottish drama, studied as a set text in schools and universities. In Mulgrew's production, the two queens were brought vigorously to life by Anne Lacey (Mary) and Alison Peebles (Elizabeth), with each actress ingeniously doubling as the other queen's maid. Myra McFadyen gave an antic performance as La Corbie; while Mulgrew himself was the proudly puritanical Knox, "seduced by the siren song o' toleration". The play remains timely, not least because it extrapolates the struggle of faith between Catholic Mary and the Protestants Knox and Elizabeth to expose the legacy of sectarianism that still divides Scotland. It's also, of course, a feminist play, in which both monarchs are subject to the patriarchal mores that surround them, and Elizabeth is obliged to renounce her femininity to assert her political power.

"Feminism can't change biology," confirms Lochhead. "Elizabeth's way of winning - in my play and in the Schiller version - is to become a female king. And what it leads to, of course, is sterility eventually." As the real Elizabeth put it in 1588: "I know I have but the body of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king." And of course it was Mary's son, James, who succeeded both queens.

There have been revivals of Lochhead's play, including a notable one by David McVicar at the Brunton Theatre, Musselburgh in 1994, with which she was delighted; and a touring production in 2003, which she found disappointing. What she really wants, she admits frankly, is a revival by the NTS, with Mulgrew back as director and McFadyen reprising La Corbie.

"I'm thrilled that the National is doing the Schiller," she says. "It's a wonderful play and I'm sure the new version's great and I'm dying to see my friend Siobhan Redmond as Elizabeth. It's just ... Can we do my play as well, please?"

For now, it's left to Messrs Schiller and Harrower to shed fresh light on this historical icon who fascinates us so much. Or does she? Harrower is ambivalent. "Is she popular?" he says. "I'm not sure. I'd put her alongside someone like Bonnie Prince Charlie: you can't really hold her up as meritorious because she was headstrong and ruled by her heart and did the wrong thing. I'm not sure what she stands for within Scottish culture. I suppose she's a romantic heroine - but again, Elizabeth inspires more fiction than she has, which is strange because she's got a much more exciting life in a way. It's going to be intriguing to find out what audiences make of her."

• Mary Stuart, Citizens Theatre, Glasgow, 3-21 October; Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, 27 October-18 November.