VISUAL ARTS

Helen Mirren reprises her Academy Award winning role as Queen Elizabeth II in the highly-anticipated West End production of The Audience, broadcast live from London’s Gielgud Theatre as part of National Theatre Live. For sixty years Elizabeth II has met each of her twelve Prime Ministers in a weekly audience at Buckingham Palace – a meeting like no other in British public life – it is private. Both parties have an unspoken agreement never to repeat what is said. Not even to their spouses. The Audience breaks this contract of silence – and imagines a series of pivotal meetings between the Downing Street incumbents and their Queen. From Churchill to Cameron, each Prime Minister has used these private conversations as a sounding board and a confessional – sometimes intimate, sometimes explosive.