The Audience

For sixty years Elizabeth II has met each of her twelve prime ministers in a weekly audience at Buckingham Palace, a meeting like no other in British public life ...

It is private and both parties have an unspoken agreement never to repeat what is said

Not even to their spouses

The Audience breaks this contract of silence

It imagines a series of pivotal meetings between the Downing Street incumbents and their Queen

From Churchill to Cameron, each prime minister has used these private conversations as a sounding board and a confessional - sometimes intimate, sometimes explosive

From young mother to grandmother, these private audiences chart the arc of the second Elizabethan Age

Politicians come and go through the revolving door of electoral politics, while she remains constant - waiting to welcome her next prime minister

The Audience premiered at the Gielgud Theatre, London, in March 2013 with the following cast:

Helen Mirren - Queen Elizabeth II
Michael Elwyn - Sir Anthony Eden
Haydn Gwynne - Margaret Thatcher
Richard McCabe - Harold Wilson
Nathaniel Parker - Gordon Brown
Paul Ritter - John Major
Rufus Wright - David Cameron
Edward Fox - Winston Churchill
David Peart - James Callaghan/Private Secretary
Geoffrey Beevers - Equerry
Bebe Cave, Maya Gerber, Nell Williams - Young Elizabeth
Charlotte Moore - Bobo MacDonald/Private Secretary
Harry Feltham, Matt Plumb - Junior Equerries/Footmen
Spencer Kitchen, Elaine Solomon - Queen’s Dressers
Jonathan Coote - Cecil Beaton/Detective
Ian Houghton - Detective/Policeman

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