The film “The King’s Speech” raked in $400 million in global box office revenue and nabbed four Academy Awards in 2011, including best picture and a best actor Oscar for star Colin Firth.
But it was supposed to be a play.
David Seidler’s story — of the unlikely real-life friendship between Britain’s King George VI and the unconventional speech therapist, Lionel Logue, who treated the monarch’s crippling stammer — was originally conceived for the stage. And that’s how audiences will experience “The King’s Speech” when the play makes its North American premiere at Chicago Shakespeare Theater — in previews Sept. 12 and opening Sept. 20.
The production’s director, Michael Wilson, may be one of the few people who’s never seen the movie, and he opted to remain in the dark even after accepting the offer to helm the stage productions.
“I went back and forth. I realized I couldn’t watch it,” said Wilson, who’s shepherding his first Chicago show in more than a decade. “I didn’t need the film as an inspiration and that’s freed me in a way. I will say that what we’re creating is something that’s decidedly theatrical.”
Working with his own Oscar-winning screenplay, Seidler, who had retooled his initial material to conform to the confines of the silver screen, revised it again for theater audiences, reinserting domestic scenes and devoting more space to the political issues swirling around his characters.
Wilson’s experience directing screen-to-stage adaptations, including the Broadway run of “Enchanted April,” as well as his credits as a film director made him a savvy choice to oversee newest staging of “The King’s Speech,” which will tour the country after its Chicago engagement. He’s comfortable both with spectacle and the prosaic.
“We’re reaching for the most we can, everybody’s reaching to the farthest tendrils of their fingertips,” Wilson said.
Audiences can expect a gorgeous costume drama, full of pageantry and the sweep of history, “but we’re also creating intimacy within that pageant,” Wilson said. “It becomes a family drama about the private selves as much as the public selves, played against a background of chaos and danger.”
A pair of veteran performers, both of whom know their way around a period piece, have been cast in the lead roles. Harry Hadden-Paton (“Downton Abbey,” “The Crown” and Broadway’s “My Fair Lady”) tackles the role of King George VI (known as Bertie), the reluctant monarch who unexpectedly inherited the throne after his brother, Edward VIII, gave up the crown in order to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson. James Frain (“The Tudors,” “True Blood,” “The White Queen”) steps into the character of Lionel Logue.
Though the events portrayed in “The King’s Speech” occurred more than 80 years ago, the play is more topical today than anyone could have anticipated.
“It’s very much a mirror to our time,” said Wilson, referencing Brexit and the Trump presidency. “Our play is set at a time of constitutional crisis [Edward’s abdication]. And now we find ourselves in a complicated moment. There is a crisis and absence of real leadership that involves sacrifice and setting an example. The play dares to ask questions about what is service and what is privilege and what duty comes with privilege.”
Patty Wetli is a local freelance writer.
