Richard III

In playing Queen Elizabeth in the 2003 season at the RSC Stratford, Maureen Beattie compelled attention, and not simply because her eyes, for a brunette, were so nakedly blue: her appealing Scottish voice was at ease with Shakespeare's verse. Below are just a few of the fabulous reviews Maureen has received for her role as Queen Elizabeth I. Few of the other male players make an impression. Of the women, Maureen Beattie is an impressive Queen Elizabeth, but Sheila Reid squanders her powerful start as the vengeful Margaret of Anjou by wildly overplaying her guttural Gallic R's so that she just becomes annoying. Holmes gets the story across, more or less, but there's no sense of anything going on underneath. Richard IIIs haven't exactly been thin on the ground of late, and there's really no reason for devoting your time and money to seeing this one rather than any other. I've always found Queen Elizabeth an unsympathetic character, and certainly in the scenes before the death of Edward IV she was in this production too, but Maureen Beattie brought her to powerful life in the scene in which Richard tells her he is going to marry her daughter, so that we ended up feeling great sympathy and admiration for her ability to stand up to this monster. Maureen Beattie (Queen Elizabeth) really comes into her own in her final confrontation with Richard. Throughout the play Beattie gives Elizabeth great dignity and power. In this Act IV scene she and Goodman, acting out their head-on collision, transcend anything that has gone before. Their combined power shakes the auditorium. Maureen Beattie as Elizabeth moves smoothly from aloof queen to distraught mother when the little princes are murdered. The scene where Richard persuades her to let him marry her daughter, after her sons have been killed, is full of tension and one of the best of the play.