The Stratford Festival Announces Additional Performances for MARY STUART

The Stratford Festival has just announced that matinee performances of Mary Stuart have been added to the 2013 schedule on August 27 and September 20. Tickets are available online and through the box office.

"This rarely performed play explores the fascinating relationship between two iconic figures from history - Mary, Queen of Scots, and Queen Elizabeth I - and features two of Canada's finest actors, Seana McKenna and Lucy Peacock," says Executive Director Anita Gaffney. "It is the first production directed by Antoni Cimolino since he took over as Artistic Director. His production of Cymbeline was one of the highlights of last season - and we had to schedule additional performances of it as well.

"Antoni has assembled a playbill that connects through themes of 'community' and in Mary Stuart we are swept away by the political and religious forces that envelop this world. It will be interesting to see this play alongside some other selections in the season that expose these same forces, such as Measure for Measure, Othello and The Three Musketeers."

Mary Stuart features Ms Peacock in the title role and Ms McKenna as Elizabeth I. Joining them are Ben Carlson as Lord Burleigh, Brian Dennehy as the Earl of Shrewsbury and Geraint Wyn Davies as the Earl of Leicester.

The play, by Friedrich Schiller, follows a period in the life of Mary Stuart, when the former Queen of Scots has been imprisoned in England because her very existence poses a political and personal risk to her Protestant cousin, Elizabeth I. As Elizabeth hesitates over decreeing her rival's fate, Mary pleads for a face-to-face meeting, and we see how religion can become a tool in the hands of cynical politicians who are willing to sacrifice lives in the supposed interests of the state.