Screenwriter Daisy Goodwin’s latest work, presented at the Watermill Theatre, Newbury, revisits the iconic relationship between Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Goodwin was initially intrigued by the historical detail that Albert chose Victoria’s bonnets, prompting her to question if this was a sign of devoted partnership or a subtler form of dominance. Her exploration, which first manifested as a TV drama, now culminates in a new play that deeply scrutinizes their revered union, revealing a narrative of coercive control beneath the facade of a model marriage.
The play opens in the somber latter years of Victoria’s extensive reign at Windsor Castle. Amanda Boxer portrays the elderly Queen as a “fretful owl” clad in black bombazine, a character both withered and imperious, yet not immune to self-pity, lamenting her state as “a poor widow with no one to support me through all my tribulations.” An avid diarist throughout her life, her children express concern over the potentially revealing contents of her candid journals, fearing their publication after her death.