Out of all the Old Testament heroines to make your poster-girl, the one the Tudors lost their heads over was Queen Esther. Her bravery led to comparisons with Elizabeth the First. Her humility was depicted in embroidery. Christians saw her as a proto-Virgin Mary. A tapestry at Hever Castle long thought to depict Mary Tudor marrying the King of France has turned out be Esther's wedding to King Ahasuerus in an allegorical link with the Royal couple.
Theories abound as to why the Tudors were so obsessed with Esther - and they are described in fascinating detail in the programme for The Enterlude of the Godly Queen Hester, this latest revelatory production from the unique Edward's Boys. She was a role model; she was devout; she defended her people; at a dinner party she was the ultimate hostess. But as far as both Henry the Eighth and Ahasuerus were concerned, she was also completely irresistible. She literally won a beauty contest to become Queen. Esther is the wellspring of every search-for-a-princess narrative in Western culture, from Cinderella to The Princess Bride. For a serial seducer like Henry this wasn't so much Wolf Hall as wolf whistle.
All of which helps to explain why, in 1532, the King was entertained by a play that retold the original Purim story, but drew satirical links between the villain, Haman, and Cardinal Wolsey. Haman’s self-interested undermining of the king, in Tudor eyes, was a fitting parallel for the Catholic Church’s treatment of the English monarch. And where more ironically appropriate to perform this play, for the first time in over four hundred years, than at Christ Church, the college that Wolsey himself founded?
Edward’s Boys are pupils from King Edward VI School in Stratford-upon-Avon (popularly known as Shakespeare’s school). Since 2008, under the pioneering direction of Deputy Head Perry Mills, the school has been reenacting and reimagining the Renaissance tradition of ‘Boys’ Companies’ – troupes of child actors who were all the rage in the late sixteenth century. They had plays written specially for them by some of the greatest playwrights of the age, and they struck a kind of professional panic in companies of adult actors (even Shakespeare’s Cleopatra shudders at the idea of seeing ‘some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness’ on the stages of Rome). In digging out these forgotten texts, and exploring the confluence of child actors and ancient drama, Edward’s Boys have created both a unique window on the past and a vibrant theatrical style for the present.
The Enterlude of the Godly Queen Hester is the oldest text the school has ever performed. And they treat it with a charismatic combination of linguistic respect and interpretive irreverence. This is over fifty years before Shakespeare’s first play, and while watching it you really feel like it’s pulling you back to an earlier era. The language is not so much modern English as teetering somewhere on the cusp between late middle and early modern. It’s a medieval mystery play with the first inklings of character starting to twitch into life like little animals coming out of their burrows after a long night.
The actors, wisely, have not modernised the language. They give us the original pronunciations, so we never forget we are watching an ancient play. But at the same time they use a plethora of modern techniques – breaking the fourth wall, interpolating modern songs, pausing humorously to explain that jokes about bulls refer to Wolsey – so that the performance feels simultaneously fresh and archaic. This is not really drama as we understand it nowadays. It's more like being shown round a rarely-seen exhibit in a locked-off wing of a museum by a group of incredibly knowledgeable and enthusiastic young guides.
The double meaning of the story is elegantly underlined by having Henry the Eighth sit at one end of the traverse stage throughout, a Christopher Sly figure, always reminding us that we are watching a play within a play, a satire masquerading as biblical reenactment. And perhaps the most fascinating part of the entire show is the long, central scene that has nothing whatever to do with the original tale of Esther. This is a surreal section where the three allegorical Vices of Pride, Adulation and Ambition appear and complain that they have no role any more because Haman/Wolsey has adopted all their attributes for himself. It’s a moment where the medieval and the experimental meet, like a mashup between the Verfremdungseffekt of Bertholt Brecht and the rhyme royal of Edmund Spenser, and it’s performed with twisted physical grace by Charlie Hutton, Archie Mathers and Ilija Lazic.
There’s also a rudimentary Shakespearean clown called Hardy Dardy who, it will not surprise you to learn, is likewise absent from the Old Testament version. All these Tudor additions give a fascinating perspective of absurd commentary, and maybe even a primitive approach to the idea of inner motivation.
It would be easy for The Enterlude of the Godly Queen Hester to feel dead, irrelevant, turgid and forgotten. But it bristles with life and wit, while never forgetting its age and status. The experience is like watching a concert of early modern music played on original instruments: the music is alive, but it has the timbre of authentic antiquity.
And as if that weren’t enough…
Edward’s Boys have made this event a double-bill. As well as the original Enterlude they have also created their very own Purim Spiel, which we get after the interval. It’s a retelling of the Esther story – still ingeniously incorporating the Henry/Wolsey satire – done as a fast-moving, fifteen-minute pantomime.
The Spiel is, quite simply, hilarious. It’s as if the care and control that went into the Enterlude have been cast aside, and this ridiculously talented group of kids have been allowed to let their hair down. Full of in-jokes and rude asides, it has King Ahasuerus permanently on ‘the throne’ (ie off-stage on the toilet), Haman rapping Bow Down Bitches, and an endless stream of silly rhymes (my favourite being ‘Anne Boleyn scented with tarragon / Well you try finding a rhyme for paragon’). There’s a Two Ronnies-style sketch where Haman/Wolsey takes part in Mastermind only to find all the answers are ‘Cardinal’. And the show is nearly stolen by Zac Savidge as a giant-boobed, hairy-armpitted Mrs Haman who constantly berates her husband while making scholarly references to dramatic structure and narrative techniques.
The fact that Edward’s Boys can toss off a panto with such consummate ease gives you a peek at how much hard work and deep thought must go into the ‘serious’ part of the evening’s entertainment. Both versions of the Esther story in this show are remarkable, revealing and thoroughly enjoyable. As my grandfather would have said, ‘Vat a megilly’.