★★★★☆ An engrossing, entertaining and truly epic Royal Family drama.

The Queen is dead. Long live the King.

There it is. The simple premise, and somewhat controversial starting point, for Mike Bartlett’s latest play King Charles III, directed by Rupert Goold, originally produced by London’s Almeida Theatre and currently playing at Sydney Theatre Company. It’s a concept that feels a little cruel (poor old Lizzy) but it addresses a highly pertinent question for our times. After all, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth is nearly 90 years old, so there’s every possibility nature might take its course at any moment.

So, when the day eventually comes about (most likely sooner rather than later) and it’s time for her to shuffle on – what next? Bartlett tries his hand at answering this question and, truth be told, his vision of an Elizabeth-less future is a little grim: Prince Charles becomes King Charles, and it doesn’t take long for the cracks in the monarchy to show.

© Richard Hubert-Smith

Bartlett uses a privacy bill designed to limit freedom of the press, in response to the News of the World phone-hacking scandal – the first bill to supposedly pass through parliament after Charles (played by Robert Powell) ascends to the throne – as a plot device to drive the action. After a childhood of being raised to take over the throne, and a lifetime of waiting for the opportunity to fulfil his destiny, Charles is not so keen to follow his late mother’s hands-off approach to power. He wants to get in on the action and to make his voice heard.

When he questions the bill and threatens to withhold his signature required to pass it into law, much to the horror of the Prime Minister (Tim Treloar) and the delight of the Leader of the Opposition (Giles Taylor), he sets in motion a chain of events that soon escalates to a crisis of leadership and forces an examination of the structure of power in the United Kingdom after 60-odd years of stability and backseat driving from Elizabeth.

Charles’ refusal to toe the line throws him into direct conflict with the next generation in line for the throne: his son William (Ben Righton), who clearly loves his father but values his family’s future above all else, and his feisty wife Kate (Jennifer Bryden) who smiles sweetly for the cameras but is unambiguous in her desire to one day (now, please) be Queen.

Robert Powell and Ben Righton © Richard Hubert-Smith

Some of the characterisation is a little uneven. Poor Camilla is given a bit of a rough treatment and comes across as shrill and powerless. Prince Harry gets his own slightly dull plotline, in which he falls in love with a rebellious commoner Jess (Lucy Phelps) and tries to escape the strictures of his blood. But he is simplistically (and a bit unfairly) drawn and comes across quite skittish and immature, incapable of engaging with the bigger issues occupying the rest of his family.

Despite this, on the whole, King Charles III is a gloriously engrossing and entertaining piece of theatre, filled with all the intrigue and spectacle you would expect of a Royal drama – and speckled with enough humour to keep it fun.

One of the key sources of Bartlett’s success is his decision to frame the work as a contemporary response to Shakespeare’s plays. It’s a challenge to present these figures – both so public and yet so unknown – without caricature, so by kicking the drama up a gear and going for the full Shakespearean monty (complete with rhyming couplets, iambic pentameter, soliloquies and ghosts) he elevates the story to a level of which the Bard himself would have approved.

© Richard Hubert-Smith

And underlying everything is the constant reminder that whatever happens to the Windsor family in the coming years will happen to the people of the United Kingdom. The Royal Subjects are omnipresent and represented by a beautiful banner artwork that stretches across the back of the set (design by Tom Scutt) and is covered in the lightly sketched images of hundreds of faces in a crowd.

Ever patient, they watch on, along with the audience, to see how this truly epic Royal Family drama unfolds – and their patience is well rewarded.

King Charles III is at Roslyn Packer Theatre until April 30

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