On the heels of King Charles’ visit to Canada at the end of May, New Stages Theatre in Peterborough is closing out its 2024-25 season with a staged reading about a different monumental international visit made by a monarch-in-waiting more than 70 years ago.
Tickets are on sale for Serving Elizabeth by Canadian playwright Marcia Johnson, which will be performed for one night only on Saturday, June 14 at 7 p.m. at Market Hall Performing Arts Centre in downtown Peterborough.
Johnson wrote Serving Elizabeth in response to an episode of the hit Netflix series The Crown, a historical drama chronicling the reign of Queen Elizabeth II. The second episode of the first season, titled “Hyde Park Corner,” covers Princess Elizabeth’s 1952 trip to Kenya where she learned her father had died and she had become the Queen of England.
Johnson wrote Serving Elizabeth as a fictionalized retelling that offers a Kenyan perspective of the event, given that it was happening during a time of anti-colonial uprisings in the east African nation.
“My goal in Serving Elizabeth was not to beat (the monarchy) up,” Johnson said in a 2023 interview with CBC. “My goal was to say there’s a part of this story, a part of colonialism, that isn’t talked about enough, and if I show respect to all sides to say these are human beings who are affected by this system — some really negatively, and some really positively. If I am to tell that kind of story and a few different people look at things a different way, that makes me happy.”
In the interview, Johnson explains that the episode of The Crown only represented “one emotion” that Black people in Kenya paid to Queen Elizabeth when she arrived: “adoration and awe.” But, she says, that doesn’t reflect the reality of the time, given that the Mau Mau uprising was stirring in Kenya and many people were anti-monarchy. Johnson saw the episode as a “missed opportunity” to reflect the voices of Kenyans who were against British rule, and so she wrote her own fictionalized version of Elizabeth’s visit to Kenya.
Serving Elizabeth depicts two stories, with the 1952 timeline following Mercy, a restaurant proprietor in Kenya who is boldly anti-monarchy but is asked to cook for Princess Elizabeth at a time when Mercy’s husband is ill and her daughter has been accepted into university. In the 2015 timeline, Kenyan-Canadian film student Tia is interning on a series adjacent to The Crown, and the episode about Elizabeth’s Kenya visit has her questioning her role in the production.
A multi-talented Canadian artist, Johnson herself starred as Mercy in the production’s 2020 world premiere in Kamloops, British Columbia.
For the Market Hall staged reading, directed by New Stages’ artistic director Mark Wallace with stage management by Esther Vincent, Toronto actor and New Stages veteran Ordena Stephens-Thompson will take on the role of Mercy, while Katherine Cullen, who starred in the New Stages production of Rosamund Small’s Vitals earlier this season, will be making her return to the theatre company in the iconic role of Elizabeth.
Rounding out the cast members, each of whom has a role in both timelines of the story, are Chelsea Russell, Robert Dodds, and Cameron Grant — who will be reprising the roles of Montague and Steven he played when Serving Elizabeth was staged at the Stratford Festival in 2021.
“I’m fascinated by them,” says Grant, speaking of the royal family. “I’m fascinated by their world, how removed we are from it, and the lore and the stories that inevitably come out of their secluded lives and public lives. I love that this play engages with that.”
Grant is a Brampton-based actor, playwright, director, and educator who has worked across Canada and spent several years with the Shaw Festival. Beyond his interest in the royal family, his interest in Serving Elizabeth was personal in that he attended theatre school with Johnson’s goddaughter and Johnson was frequently in the audience.
“She was always really supportive and kind to me and I was always in awe of her,” he recalls. “She’s such an incredible playwright. She teaches playwriting too, and I think Serving Elizabeth and the response that it’s gotten really, in my opinion, matches the quality of her work.”
As for the interest he has in the characters he plays, Grant says Montague and Steven are “both really interesting characters who are young and grappling with the beginning of their careers and their lives.”
“Montague is from Kenya, but he was educated at Cambridge University and then comes back to Kenya, and is working through the colonial political system at a time when that system is starting to be challenged pretty significantly,” he says. “He sees a pathway to the country’s prosperity through the colonial system, which is interesting,”
In the 2015 timeline, Steven is a character Grant can relate to because they are both young rising actors, though his character gets into “sticky” situations.
“He has this moment where he realizes, ‘Oh, the function that I would take in this story will leave me without agency and will leave me, as an actor, feeling quite exposed and maybe in opposition to the things that I actually believe or that I stand for,'” says Grant, noting this power of art in historical fiction is a theme of the play.
“They’re both really interesting characters to sink into and I’ll have to flip between them within the course of the play quite often.”
Grant notes there are times when the timelines will come together in “unexpected” ways, where the historical and fictional aspects of the story work in conversation with each other.
“I think sometimes history, when we find out something’s real or it’s about this particular event that we have a general awareness of, that’s the thing that invites the audience to lean in,” Grant says. “And it allows us to ask questions, like ‘Did this really happen?’ It allows you to listen differently and maybe more critically.”
“Historical fiction is an enticing drama genre. There’s a responsibility to getting the story and the history accurate, but there’s also fiction — and in the fiction, there’s an opportunity to fill in the gap. There’s an opportunity to view the story from another perspective, to centre another perspective, or to at least include another perspective. And I think there’s an opportunity and responsibility now to do both.”
Though his performance at the Stratford Festival happened during the pandemic, which limited the opportunity for educational talks surrounding it, Grant knows there was positive feedback to the play and hopes that, for its first time on a Peterborough stage, Serving Elizabeth will elicit the same critical thinking from the audience.
“It gets them thinking about the role of the monarchy in our lives and also the show The Crown and how we tell stories,” he says. “It’s not just about doing your research — it’s about doing your research and broadening that research.”
“I think the audience will see the play grapple with that — and some of the characters grapple with that in this play — and it leads to this really exciting final scene where those ideas come to a head.”
Serving Elizabeth will be performed at 7 p.m. on Saturday, June 14 at Market Hall Performing Acts Centre, and runs for approximately two hours including an intermission.
Tickets are priced at $28 plus fee (half-priced for students, art workers, or for the under waged) and are available online at markethall.org, by calling 705-749-1146, or by visiting the box office at 140 Charlotte Street.
At the performance, New Stages will also be announcing the lineup for its 2025-26 season. Subscriptions will go on sale that evening with the chance to reserve a preferred seat, as all New Stages shows at the Market Hall in 2025-26 will have reserved seating.
kawarthaNOW is proud to be media sponsor of New Stages Theatre Company’s 2024-25 season.
