See top of page
A comedy of Very High Life by Helena Wood.

At 8.15
The action takes place in Paris in the years 1514 and 1515.
The monarchs of medieval Europe possessed no more valuable exportable assets than their young female relatives, the pretty little princesses whose fair hands were bartered in marriages of convenience to suit the diplomacy of their sovereigns. Mary Tudor, for example, sister of England's Henry VIII, was but eighteen when her brother despatched her across the Channel to marry the elderly and ailing Louis XII who had it in mind that she should bear him a son to displace his son-in-law and cousin, Francis, Duke of Angouleme, as heir to the throne. Helena Wood tells her story in a romantic play touched by high and ironic comedy. It is, a story complicated not only by the intrigues of Francis, who resolved to thwart the king by making a bid for Mary's affections, but by the fact that before sailing for France she had displayed a family weakness and incautiously permitted herself the luxury of falling in love.
(Kenneth A. Hurren)