Anne Boleyn is still a hot item five centuries after her death. She’s the girl who so fascinated Henry VIII that he was reduced to destroying the Roman Catholic church in England so he could divorce his wife, Catherine of Aragon, and marry Anne instead. (Anne wouldn’t bed Henry, it seems, without an actual marriage — despite all his kingly power and charm.)
Though Henry desperately wanted a son — the lack of a male heir was his excuse for leaving Catherine — Anne produced a daughter, who would one day be known as Queen Elizabeth I. And finally, of course, Anne was beheaded at Henry’s order when their marriage went south and his eye strayed elsewhere.
There are very many interesting aspects to this real-life story. “Anne of the Thousand Days,” which runs through August 15 at Eugene’s Very Little Theatre, examines one of the most examined marriages in history through a deeply personal lens. The play, written in 1948 by Maxwell Anderson and produced as movie in 1969 with Richard Burton and Genevieve Bujold, explores the nature of love, desire, attraction and obsession between men and women. Why is it, the play seems to wonder, that we only truly love people who don’t love us?
It’s written in a kind of Elizabethan lite, with enough passages of blank verse to give it an archaic quality without overwhelming contemporary audiences.
The VLT production, directed by Jay Hash, sets the story in an apocalyptic future on a set designed by Bill Campbell. The play opens with black and white security monitors showing Anne in her cell in the Tower of London, where she awaits execution. This conceit is a lot less strange than it sounds, as it places the show in an indefinite theatrical world I’ve sometimes called Shakespearelandia. That’s a place where men and women wear dark costumes — leather is preferred — tattoos dominate, and whatever props happen to be around the theater storeroom work perfectly well, whether they’re from the 16th century or the 21st.
No matter. The story is well told here. Melanie Moser plays Anne with considerable force. Between her sharp repartee and the actual knives with which she lashes out at anyone who annoys her, she holds our attention every moment she is on stage. Moser’s Anne is, if anything, aggressive to a fault, and I wondered after a while exactly what it was that Henry saw in her, given the fact he could have his pick of more pleasant women.
By contrast, Shawn Bookey plays Henry with considerable subtlety. His king is wonderfully dissolute, born to the role and already tired of it, and seems as surprised as anyone to find himself desperately in love with this volatile woman who, he understands, will change the course of history.
It all ends in tears, of course, but not before we enjoy fine performances by Blake Beardsley, as Thomas Cromwell, and Dave Kessler as Cardinal Wolsley.
Go see it, and enjoy a steamy chapter in English history.