Tarragon Theatre’s Artistic Director, Mike Payette and Executive Director Lisa Li, are presenting the Toronto Premiere of Queen Maeve by Governor General’s Award-winning playwright Judith Thompson.
Canadian theatre and screen legend Clare Coulter stars in the play. It marks the first time that Coulter and Thompson have worked together at Tarragon in more than a decade.
“It is a tremendous gift to welcome back two of Canada’s most celebrated artists back to Tarragon Theatre,” remarks Tarragon’s Artistic Director and show director Mike Payette in a statement.
Queen Maeve takes the stage from March 3 to 29, with an opening night of March 11.
The Play
The story is bittersweet, as Coulter’s Maeve faces her twilight years, and tries to come to terms with her life as she has lived it. She confronts her past from her bedroom, wrestling with regrets and losses, and making sense of the mistakes she made for love.
She is an elderly woman who’s life seems rather crushingly ordinary from the outside. But, is she also the reincarnation of a legendary Irish warrior queen?
Identity, legacy, and aging are the major themes that run through the work, where reality and myth are intermingled.
Clare Coulter’s recent theatre credits include Top Girls at Tarragon Theatre, and King Lear at the World Stage Festivaln. Coulter has an extensive background in both TV and film as well as theatre, including appearances on the series Severance, Fargo and Star Trek: Discovery, and many others, and several films. She is a Dora Award winner, and has been nominated for a Genie, Gemini, and Canadian Screen Award, among others.
As an actress, she’s worked with some of Canada’s most significant writers, including Michel Tremblay, Ann-Marie MacDonald, and W.O. Mitchell, along with Judith Thompson and others.
“Judith Thompson’s repertoire is foundational within Canadian theatre, and her latest work, Queen Maeve, invites us into the world of a woman that is equally familiar as she is timeless in her warrior mythology,” says Payette.
“Portrayed by the incomparable Clare Coulter, the play takes us through a day’s journey of our heroine who is battling life and memory within the confines of her self-described tomb, all-the-while seeking refuge in the possibility of forgiveness and family connection. Layering biting dialogue with rich imagery and beautiful narrative, I am thrilled to share this quest with a team of greats for this exceptional play’s Toronto homecoming.”
Queen Maeve also features a stellar ensemble cast: Ryan Bommarito (Tarragon debut, Strawberries in January: A Musical Fantasy/Centaur Theatre, Moonfall/Lionsgate), Caroline Gillis (New Magic Valley Fun Town/Tarragon Theatre, Saving Graceland/Blyth Festival, Women Talking/MGM), and Sarah Orenstein (Patience/Tarragon Theatre, Shakespeare in Love/Stratford, Albatross).
Judith Thompson
Judith Thompson is a two-time Governor General’s Award-winner (White Biting Dog, The Other Side of the Dark).
Beginning in the 1980s, with Artistic Director Urjo Kareda, Thompson worked extensively at Tarragon Theatre. White Biting Dog premiered there in 1984, and it would be the first of many of her plays to take the stage first at Tarragon. The association helped to establish both Thompson’s career, and Tarragon as a company focused on fostering Canadian playwriting.
Today, Thompson is playwright, director, screenwriter, actor and artistic director/producer with an international reputation. She is also a professor at the School of Theatre, English, and Creative Writing at the University of Guelph.
Queen Maeve had its world premiere in September 2023 at Here For Now Theatre in Stratford, Ontario.
Judith Thompson: The Interview
How did the story take shape?
“I was given the prompt,” Thompson recalls. It as part of a project to write a series of ten online plays commissioned by a Montréal theatre company. “I said sure, I’m very interested in that, in aging, and what it means, and excavating that.”
When it came to the idea of Queen Maeve, she had to do some digging.
“I did have to do some research,” she says. “I think I looked up Irish queens and warriors.” Queen Maeve was perfect. “That’s actually right for the character,” she’d thought.
Irish heritage doesn’t play into the story or character per se. “The point is, she needs to find the mythic queen in herself.” As Judith points out, Maeve, like many older women in our world, has been deemed a non-entity by society at large — but, within her family circle, she’s a force to be reckoned with. “Sometimes, a destructive force,” she adds.
“It’s framed by her interactions with her PSW,” Thompson explains. Caroline Gillis plays the role of Siobhan, her personal support worker.
Dealing With The Past: Summoning The Inner Warrior Queen
While the action is confined to a single day, it contains what Thompson calls two “big juicy scenes” where Maeve relives pivotal moments in her life. They represent the times when Maeve, far from being a non-entity, changed everything for everyone concerned. She has to address the fallout that resulted, and her guilt.
“It’s her final day. She has to do it.”
While the details may be different, the larger themes will resonate with women in the audience.
“I think all of us, we women, we all have to find the mythic queen warrior inside ourselves in order to survive in this misogynistic world,” Thompson says.
The talks about the recent court case where five hockey players in London, Ontario were acquitted of sexually assaulting a young woman because the judge didn’t find her credible.
“She says she had to play the role of the porn star in order to survive,” Thompson says. While the judge didn’t believe her story, she thinks women understand it only too well. “As women, we understand this is survival mode,” she says.
“That’s what I was exploring is that at any age, we have to find that warrior,” Thompson continues.
“And who’s to say that she isn’t Queen Maeve?”
Judith notes that people have essentially dismissed the character as a victim of dementia — but Thompson doesn’t see it that way.
Maeve is looking for a way to face her regrets over the past. She’s ordinary and forgettable to everyone else — except within her own family. “There, we are architects.”
Casting
“As soon as I wrote it, and spoke to the original director [of the Stratford Festival premiere] I suggested Clare, and I wanted Clare,” Thompson says. “Clare has worked on five of my plays. I know she really understands my work.”
Coulter is a powerhouse of an actress.
“It’s like having Aretha Franklin sing your songs,” Judith says.
“She understands that it’s a piece of music. She calls it operatic. She inhabits the rhythm in an unmatchable way. Brings a musicality that many might not see, but yet maintains a natural quality as well,” she explains.
“All drama has to be rhythmic and musical,” she adds. “In a play, it is the medium, it is the rhythm.”
She points out that, with TV or film, dialogue serves a specific purpose within the plot. It doesn’t have the same emphasis or role as in a stage drama.
The Production
Within Maeve’s bedroom in an institution, Thompson explains that the walls are covered by about 400 drawings created by set and costume designer Ken MacDonald. In the story, they are Maeve’s paintings and drawings, and include subjects like the wolves outside her window, her legendary tomb in Ireland, family members, and more.
Along with Coulter and Gillis’s PSW, Ryan Bommarito is Jake, Maeve’s grandson, and Sarah Orenstein portrays Georgia, her daughter.
“All magnificent,” Thompson says.
“She is reliving past moments that are pivotal and changed everything,” she adds. The two family members come for a visit. “They’re looking in on her with a purpose.” It relates to the two tumultuous scenes/events Maeve is recalling. “She needs to relive those two scenes in order to forgive herself, or not, in order to prepare herself to die.”
As Judith points out, when it comes to old family disputes, over time, many of the details dim and blur, or are even rewritten. In real life, there is seldom a moment of absolute clarity.
“It’s the duty of a playwright to parse it out, and unpack it.”
Since its 2023 premiere, there has been time for Thompson to take another look at the script.
“It was really wonderful to have the space and time to look at the script with fresh eyes, and do the revisions that I have done,” she says. “It’s a revised play.”
One of the aspects she’s enjoying about the Tarragon production is the stage itself. In Stratford, the production took place in a small tent outdoors. At Tarragon, there’s more room for the actors to move around — and, presumably, fewer flies to buzz around the audience.
“It was enchanting in its own way,” she recalls.
Another plus in favour of Tarragon is the personnel.
“To have Mike Payette, who is a visionary director. […] is just an honour for me.”
Credits
Written by Judith Thompson, the play is directed by Mike Payette, with Summer Mahmud acting as assistant director.
The rest of the creative team includes:
- Production dramaturgy by Jeff Ho (he/him)
- Set & Costume design by Ken MacDonald
- Lighting design by Jason Hand (he/him)
- Sound design by John Gzowski (he/him)
- Movement consultation by M. John Kennedy (he/him)
- Stage management by Em Aubin (they/them/all)
- Apprentice stage management by Jacob Beecher (he/him)
- Set assistance by Jung-Hye Kim (she/her)
Find tickets and show details for Queen Maeve [HERE].
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