Fresh from playing the title role in Lear at Pitlochry and just before assuming the part of the Headmistress in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie for the National Theatre of Scotland, the redoubtable Maureen Beattie will be revisiting one of her most colourful characterisations when she portrays Mary, Queen of Scots in a staged reading of W. Gordon Smith’s Marie of Scotland at the historic Britannia Panopticon Music Hall at 3pm on Sunday 13th September. The play evokes the last two days in the life of the doomed Queen as she awaits her execution at Fotheringhay Castle. Beattie first performed it on the 1987 Edinburgh Festival Fringe before touring to other venues in Scotland and Spain – including a particularly notable rendition at Rothesay Castle in Bute when a gathering storm during the final moments of the show culminated in a crash of lightening to accompany the Queen’s last lines. The afternoon at the Britannia Panopticon will be by way of a fundraiser for the continued restoration of this much loved building and reunites Beattie with stage manager Sue Barrie. The fundraiser they mounted last year (a staged reading of Frederic Mohr’s Acting Up) sold out. So prospective patrons of this year’s event are advised to secure their tickets at the earliest opportunity.

Description supplied by the event organiser.