Mary Stuart, Donmar Warehouse, London

Mary, Mary, quite contrary...

Taking a leaf out of Grandage's book, Phyllida Lloyd's production is visually austere yet beautiful. Fortheringhay Castle, where Janet McTeer's Mary has been imprisoned, is a dark stone-flagged space illuminated by shafts of wintry sunlight. When the scene switches to the Palace of Westminster - where Harriet Walter's Elizabeth listens to contrary rounds of advice from her ministers and her trusted favourite, Robert Dudley - no elaborate set changes are required. There is simply more golden splendour in the blazing light which silhouettes the image-conscious English monarch. Both queens appear in period dress while the politic lords wear double-breasted suits and carry bureaucratic briefcases.

Curiously, you hardly notice the anomaly. As for Oswald's dialogue, this steers between prose and subtly rhythmic pentameters. Simultaneously, the topicality, regarding international religious conflicts and judicial crises, leaps out at you (with I think, from glancing at the script, some extra loaded phrases added in rehearsals).

Although it would be a mistake to overstate the parallels between 16th-century Catholics and today's Muslims, Mary's situation is certainly food for thought. She argues that she ought to be treated as a refugee not a criminal on English soil and that long-standing laws are being contravened so the state can keep her under house arrest. She is also not being allowed to worship fully, according to her own creed, in captivity. Meanwhile, David Horovitch's hardline, beady-eyed Lord Burleigh believes she inspires dangerous fanaticism as a martyr figure. He accuses her of being in direct contact with cells of papist assassins and, perhaps wrongly, of masterminding their attempts to destroy Protestant rule. He doesn't yet know about the undercover Catholic, Mortimer, who considers it would be glorious to die for the cause and who is in league with the covertly scheming Dudley - Mary's old flame.

There are a few weak links in Lloyd's ensemble. Tam Dean Burn's accent is all over the place as the French ambassador, and Rory Kinnear's Mortimer doesn't bring out the erotic excitement underlying his ardent first speeches to Mary. McTeer and Walter are also a tad long in the tooth for Schiller's specifically young heroines. Cavils aside, this cast invest the political debates with a great urgency and they cope with many a histrionic purple patch by tackling them with a passion. Guy Henry is superb as Dudley, a dapper politician through and through, combining tenderness and callous sharp moves, exuding casual self-confidence with his hands in his pockets, but also living on a knife-edge as double agent. McTeer's Mary is awesomely tall and dignified yet also riven with rage and suppressed panic. Walter's Elizabeth is sorely tried by the pressures of rule, but in the end she's the greatest pretender of them all, publicly acting compassionate, pursuing realpolitik in private, and then royally passing the buck. This a sharp, darkly funny and mournful portrait of rulers in action and the ultimate loneliness of amoral self-advancement. Recommended.

k.bassett@independent.co.uk

To 3 September, 0870 060 6624