What a character Margaret of Anjou (1430-1482), the young French princess—daughter of René of Anjou, titular king of Naples, Jerusalem and Aragon—married to King Henry VI of England and a relevant figure, even at the head of troops, in the English civil war known as the War of the Roses. makes Margaret appear in four of his historical tragedies (parts one, two and three of King Henry VI y Ricardo III) through which he passes like a meteor, starring in some sensational scenes and speeches, such as his appearance with the head of his Suffolk lover in his hands, the famous slap to the Duchess of Gloucester, or the terrible humiliation of Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, prisoner after the battle of Wakefield, placing a paper crown on him and offering him a red handkerchief in his son’s blood, which is already cruelty, before stabbing him.
It is that York who describes her as “she-wolf of France, if not worse than the wolves of France” (in addition to throwing other niceties at her such as “amazon whore” and the most cultist “ten times worse than the tigers of Hyrcania” (if they are going to kill you, you’ll let it all out). And it is the name wolf that the Catalan playwright has now used to title his work. The Wolf Queena unique, very interesting and very stimulating theatrical artifact that becomes, Carrió dixit, like the tragedy about Margaret of Anjou that Shakespeare never wrote.
The piece, in Catalan and in verse, which premieres on Wednesday in the Sala Petita of the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya (TNC) in Barcelona directed by Carrió himself and Maria Rodríguez Soto as the protagonist, mixes in an original puzzle parts of what the Elizabethan author told us about the character with other texts by Carrió himself that serve to fill in what the Bard did not explain and turn the English queen of French origin into the center of her own tragedy. The work has already been published by the TNC itself and it is a fascinating hobby to follow Carrió’s text, comparing it with the passages of Shakespeare’s works in which Margaret of Anjou appears and see what the Catalan playwright has collected – and in what way – and what he has invented.
This afternoon, when presenting the show, the artistic director of the TNC has placed the work in the programming as “very appropriate” within the framework of “a season dedicated to women and giving back to them the story that has traditionally been stolen from them.” He recalled that Margarita is a character who moves at times like a shadow through Shakespeare’s works and whom Pau Carrió portrays as a central character, allowing her to explain herself at length.
Portaceli, involved in her own Shakespearean episode, her replacement at the head of the TNC, has taken the opportunity to explain that she is considering running for the public contest that has been opened to elect her replacement. Portaceli ends his six-year contract in July 2027, but the board of directors of the TNC has already started, on Friday, the process for the competition from which the new director will emerge in June of this year who will accompany the outgoing director for a season to become familiar with the theater (a procedure that is usually done).
Good connoisseur of Shakespeare (Victory of Henry V, Hamlet, Twelfth Night), Carrió considers that in Margarita there is a very interesting character with very good lines and a unique story that is worth exploring dramaturgically. He has recalled that Margaret’s life story begins in Shakespeare at the age of 16 when she falls prisoner of the English (significantly at the same time that her countrywoman Joan of Arc, Pucela, is taken to the stake and curses the English and their kingdom, a curse that Margaret herself could be said to fulfill), and ends with the widowed and dispossessed queen becoming an old woman.
Carrió has compared the figure of Margaret with those of Shakespeare’s other medieval female characters such as Lady Macbeth and has pointed out how the former detaches itself from the usual perspective of women who crack, break and end up committing suicide. Margarita relates to power, takes it, fights for it, in a world of men who try to “put her in her place” and call her a witch, evil and wolf, although she is the same as the others (“I had an Eduardo until a Ricardo killed him, you had a Ricardo until an Eduardo killed him”). “It deserves its own tragedy and that we listen to it,” the author concluded.
Regarding the brutality that Margarita displays (“the blood of your fills will rust the meva espasa”), Carrió has said that it is no different from that of her surroundings and has recalled that this brutality is undoubtedly in line “with that of current politics.” He added that a woman does not have to be an exemplary character and that they wanted to claim that Margarita has the right to her dark side, just like male characters.
The work is not a monologue by the protagonist, he continued, but a journey in which seven other performers participate (Quim Àvila, Pepo Blasco, Queralt Casasayas, Josep Julien, Xavi Ricart, Pau Roca and David Vert, in addition to Ana Nicolás de Cabo, who performs the music live), who embody a dozen characters. The playwright has recalled that the historical character of Margaret herself is very interesting, “a queen who commanded armies of the Lancastrians with armor on; it seems incredible that she survived everything, and she did.”
Regarding the construction of the work, Carrió has said that he has taken pieces of the aforementioned historical tragedies of Shakespeare—referring to the original texts in English—plus some fragments of others that serve to explain particular things. The playwright has noted, somewhat cheekily, that he himself finds it difficult to say what is Shakespeare’s and what is his in the mix, given how much he has touched on the source material. “I don’t owe him fidelity,” he pointed out and considered that in any case Shakespeare, accustomed to having everything done with him, “won’t be nervous because we remove him.”
To stage the tragedy of the Wolf Queen, Carrió wanted to play with metatheatricality and “make as if we were an Elizabethan company performing the play.” In that sense, they adopt Shakespeare’s procedure that the word is what visualizes everything and the imagination, guided by it, is what takes us to palaces or battlefields. We will also visit the Globe theater booth where Elizabethan actors quickly changed their clothes or poured (a lot of) blood on themselves. Carrió, who claims to be an actor, explained that he really wanted to work extensively with Maria Rodríguez Soto, whom he has directed in other roles.
The actress explained that for her it has been “a challenge” and “a pain” to get into Margarita’s shoes but also an exciting job. “It is a work of very strong and basic emotions,” he said of The Wolf Queen“in which my character exhibits survival instinct, political reason, love, hate, sadism and impulse for revenge.” The work begins with a monologue by the old Queen Margaret (55 years old, but from the Middle Ages), and goes backwards to show her as a 16-year-old prisoner and advances from there following the story. “It is a very intense evolution, physical and mental, in which we can play with Margarita’s hyper-awareness about her journey and its end.”
For the actor Quim Àvila, who looks like he has double earrings in his ears and does something as difficult as playing Henry VI and Richard III, two such antithetical Shakespearean characters, the experience is one that marks: “It is wonderful to say words that are both so grandiose and beautiful; history sweeps you away like a bloody wave.” Àvila has had a moment of great Shakespearean comedy when he points out that Henry VI (Lancaster) and Richard III (York), who both “conflict” with their family inheritances, carry backpacks, “more clearly Richard”, who was a hunchback.
