Successful Entertainment: A Review of "The Virgin Queen Entertains Her Fool" at American Players Theatre

Mary Wisniewski, NewCity Stage

“The Virgin Queen Entertains Her Fool” is a bawdy, witty, fast-paced tragicomedy, brilliantly acted and expertly plotted. It is not profound or emotionally engaging—if you want that, you should see American Players’ magnificent “King Lear” on the hill. But “The Virgin Queen” is pure entertaining theater, so it’s no wonder that most of its remaining run is sold out.

The play by Michael Hollinger, premiering this summer at Spring Green’s indoor Touchstone space, stars longtime APT star Tracy Michelle Arnold as Adahlia, head of an imaginary country that’s a lot like Elizabethan England, only she’s not Queen Elizabeth. She’s dying of a malady that can only be treated with “poppies’ tears.” Her advisor Blanchard, played by APT stalwart Jim DeVita, wants her to name a successor to avoid civil war when she dies. Her choices are two unpleasant relations, a niece and a nephew, who have armies waiting to clash if she dies without an heir. Adahlia complains that “successor” is a word that “sounds like success but feels like failure.”

Queen Adahlia only brightens when she sees her fool, Ermo, played by Josh Krause, who’s also the Fool in “Lear.” Ermo conducts elaborate jests on the queen’s behalf—dressing up first as a lusty foreign suitor, and later an archbishop. He makes fart jokes and sings sweet love songs—everything you would want in a fool, especially when you’re dying. Adahlia wishes she could make him king, though the practical Blanchard warns of a possible blood bath if she tried.

The play’s machinery is efficient. Like a theatrical Rube Goldberg machine, the props of destiny are set in place—a cup, an unsigned proclamation, a trap door—waiting to do their work. But that doesn’t keep the end from being both exciting and chilling. Under the direction of Aaron Posner, the show runs for ninety minutes without intermission, but moves so fast you don’t feel the time.

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