by Eugene Paul

Helen Mirren is in residence on Broadway as the Queen.  It behooves you to make haste to be in her presence.

Here, in this splendiferous delight of ever in fashion old fashioned out and out theatrical craftsmanship, the compelling richness of Bob Crowley’s settings and costumes frame luminescent Helen Mirren as England’s long reigning monarch as she gives her successive prime ministers their weekly audience to tell Queen Elizabeth II what is or should be or should not be going on in her realm. And, in spite of what she is told, it is tradition and protocol always for the Queen to support her Prime Minister. Which would presuppose  the evening to be a rather stodgy affair.  Far from it.

 How director Stephen Daldry weaves playwright Peter Morgan’s peerless lessons in artistic contrivance is a bucket full of joy in itself. What could have been a stultifying parade of politicos down the years seated gingerly on the same, fragile, immaculate, yellow silk clad fauteuil talking at some image frozen Queen seated on a matching gem of a chair has been whisked into continuous contrivances and enchantments, glittering with surprises as past and present remembrances intermingle.  The Queen, now young, now old and all the years between, reacting, involved, involving,  herself revealed more and more until she is all there before us, the deep caring behind the cultivated composure, radiant.  We have met Queen Elizabeth II and for the moment, she is ours.  What a triumph.

Oh, the stagecraft!  Inevitably, the Queen in her Tuesday ritual with her Prime Ministers meant that amazing Helen Mirren would be sitting just so for what could have been torpor inducing stretches, running the gamut of emotions from A prime to B flat. But playwright Morgan is much too wise not to devise divertissements for Helen Mirren’s sake and certainly for ours in all the senses he intends.  The Queen remembers herself as a child (splendid Sarah Sink) growing up in grave Buckingham Palace, and there she is, memory’s child, ready for our sympathy. We see the shaping of the monarch, we sympathize.  We feel for her when she sits, picture perfect, attentive, as she must be, ever on the world stage.

We delight in the bright jolts of her becoming older, becoming younger, becoming slimmer, becoming thickly sedate, becoming stately, becoming relaxed – in Scotland –becoming regally grand, almost every change right before our eyes. Clever playwright, clever director, clever crew, the grand master of these ceremonies and anomalies, utterly charming Geoffrey Beevers as the head of the Queen’s household, a gentle word to us, a mere flick of a finger to liveried lackeys and perfection is executed. All of which the Queen takes simply for granted. More and more, the somber grandeur of the palace becomes real to us, her prime ministers somehow out of place when they appear, different standards of breeding, different environments reflected, only one who makes himself quite at home.

Her ministers? So many, so different, so the same. I admired Dylan Baker as a delightfully tearful John Major, thoroughly enjoyed Richard McCabe as piercingly sharp, then fading Harold Wilson. Judith Ivey gives us a Margaret Thatcher to set one’s teeth on edge and Dakin Mattews does an equally edgy Winston  Churchill.  Rufus Wright has some fun as David Cameron almost at the Queen’s expense.  All of them, and that means everyone else, too,  treat the Queen as their Queen making it unsurprising that this Broadway audience couldn’t help but follow. We are meant to feel the many niceties and proprietary forms we are not accustomed to.  We dig the pomp and panoply.  We eat it up. I confess to being especially bowled over by the panoramic Scottish setting and would love to be there, even with that mean little electric heater, useless against the damp chill.

And I won’t tell you about the Queen’s dogs.  Too good.                                                 

The Audience. At the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre, 236 West 45^th Street.  Tickets: $785-$155. Telecharge.com.  2 hours, 20 minutes. Until June 28.