The Guardian
Watermill theatre, Newbury Screenwriter Daisy Goodwin imagines the old queen revisiting her diaries and reveals a tale of control and coercion behind Albert’s dutiful devotion When screenwriter Daisy Goodwin read that Prince Albert liked to choose Victoria’s bonnets, she wondered: was this an act of domestic devotion, or of something darker? She explored the heady early years of their relationship in a TV drama – but this new play finds a tale of coercive control within the revered model marriage. We open at Windsor, in the dank tail of Victoria’s long reign. Amanda Boxer’s queen is a fretful owl in black bombazine, withering and imperious, if no stranger to self pity (“a poor widow with no one to support me through all my tribulations”). An inveterate diary-keeper, her children worry that the candid volumes will be published after her death. Continue reading...
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