The Audience Playtext

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by Peter Morgan

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.

The Audience breaks this contract of silence. It 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. From young mother to grandmother, these private audiences chart the arc of the second Elizabethan Age. Politicians come and go through the revolving door of electoral politics, while she remains constant, waiting to welcome her next prime minister.

The Audience by Peter Morgan premiered at the Gielgud Theatre, London, in March 2013. It returned to the Apollo Theatre, London, in this revised version in April 2015.