Last Friday I had an audience with King Charles III. In an animated session when many contemporary issues were aired he (spoiler alert) threatened to dissolve parliament and confronted abdication in, at times, a quasi Shakespearean style.
Some speeches were delivered neatly in the bard’s idiom and several scenes ended with rhyming couplets, consciously drawing some continuum (and profundity) between the successions of the British monarchy as portrayed in Shakespeare’s history plays and our time which anticipates a change of monarch.
These humorous touches lightened a re-examination of the relationship between monarch and parliament in a finely performed and beautifully mounted Almeida Theatre Production presented by the Sydney Theatre Co. Although written from the UK perspective it has relevance for us in Australia.
It was great to see the British actor Robert Powell here in the flesh!