★★★★☆
The stage begins almost empty.
A giant screen glows softly at the back of the Festival Theatre stage. Against it stands the regal silhouette of Isabelle Huppert as Mary, Queen of Scots. The image is stark. The figure is unmistakably royal. It is also strangely lonely.
This visual motif frames the entire evening. The screen behind Huppert slowly morphs throughout the ninety-minute monologue: bursts of white light, spreading cracks, drifting blobs of colour. The imagery feels like a projection of Mary’s psyche.
Directed by Robert Wilson, with text by Darryl Pinckney and music by Ludovico Einaudi, Mary Said What She Said premiered in Paris in 2019 and has toured internationally before arriving at Adelaide Festival.
It is not a conventional historical drama. Instead, Wilson presents Mary’s final hours as a cascade of memory, resentment and reflection.
For the first twenty-five minutes, Huppert stands in darkness. Her hands rest on her hips. Her body barely moves. You wonder if she ever will. Words spill out in a torrent that recalls the rapid-fire monologues of Samuel Beckett.
The surtitles race across the screen. Trying to read every line quickly becomes futile. The words fly past like race cars.
At first, this feels frustrating. We go to the theatre expecting clarity. We want the narrative to make sense. But Wilson appears to reject that expectation.
Mary’s thoughts arrive in fragments. They contradict each other; they repeat obsessively. They return to betrayal, power and destiny. Perhaps that is the point.
When confronting a monarch facing execution, perhaps we should feel lost. Perhaps our desire for neat explanations is itself a distortion of the messy reality of human consciousness.
Like our own minds, Mary’s thoughts circle endlessly. They repeat ad nauseam. By the end of the play, her intrusive thoughts begin to intrude on ours.
She feels betrayed by Elizabeth I; she resents the double standards of power. She believes she was doomed from birth. Yet she also insists that the titles she inherited at birth should protect her from consequences.
Modern parallels inevitably arise. The entitlement of royal privilege echoes in figures such as Prince Andrew. The belief that power grants immunity from accountability feels equally familiar in the age of Donald Trump.
Wilson’s staging emphasises repetition and ritual. Huppert’s gestures are minimal but precise. A turn of the head. A slow step forward. A raised arm. The choreography is hypnotic. The question becomes whether repetition transforms madness into clarity. Or whether repetition simply convinces us of our own narratives.
Repeat a lie often enough, and it becomes truth. This strategy may not persuade others. But it can certainly persuade ourselves. It might even explain why people refuse repentance even as the executioner raises the axe.
There is no denying the discipline required of Huppert.
She commands a vast empty stage with voice and posture alone. The performance demands extraordinary concentration and endurance. By the end of the evening, the language itself becomes an athletic feat.
Midway through the show, the rhythm breaks. The stage floods with heavenly light. Billows of smoke drift across the floor. A strange recorded voice emerges from the darkness, repeating phrases like I’m here alongside seemingly random numbers.
The moment recalls the disorienting audio collage of The Beatles’ Revolution No. 9. It adds another layer of complexity to an already dense work.
Other sonic intrusions punctuate the performance. Children’s laughter echoes through the theatre. At other moments, demonic voices whisper from the darkness. Einaudi’s compelling score runs through it all.
The meaning is not always clear. But the unease they create is unmistakable.
By the end, Huppert returns to the same regal silhouette that opened the show. The audience responds with a standing ovation. It feels like applause recognising a generational talent completing one of the most demanding tasks in theatre.
Art, after all, is not always meant to comfort us. Sometimes it is meant to challenge us. To leave us searching for meaning. To force us to reconsider our assumptions about power, history and identity. Mary Said What She Said certainly achieves that.
Yet one question lingers. When theatre becomes deliberately incomprehensible, is it revealing the complexity of human experience or simply embracing obscurity for its own sake? Robert Wilson’s production walks that line for ninety hypnotic minutes.
Mary Said What She Said is presented by Robert Wilson and runs to 8 March at the Festival Theatre as part of 2026 Adelaide Festival.
Tickets: https://premier.ticketek.com.au/shows/show.aspx?sh=MARYSAID26
Website: https://www.adelaidefestival.com.au/whats-on/season-2026/mary-said-what-she-said
Socials: https://www.instagram.com/adelaidefestival/
Photo credits: Lucie Jansch
