In Mike McShane’s Mon Droit, an American psychiatric patient copes with a growing obsession with the Queen and decides to move to London.
The show opens in a psychiatrist’s office with a man clutching a supermarket bag decorated with a Union Jack and a photograph of the Queen. The doctor discusses the patient’s medication and his infatuation with Her Majesty, questioning his need to constantly carry her picture around with him. He puts the bag aside, only to reveal a handmade badge of her face and we realise this man’s life revolves around the Queen. The play is performed by just two actors, producing a wonderfully comedic scene at a speed dating event, during which one cast member takes on the role of approximately 10 personalities in the space of two minutes. The play explores the man’s psychiatric condition and his obsessive nature. Though he is 60 years old, he is naïve and increasingly vulnerable: he manages to get his belongings stolen more than once and has a confusing run in with a call girl whom he believes to be an agent sent from Buckingham Palace.
The man labels himself a pilgrim, whose mission in England is to save the Queens from ‘The Greek’ (Prince Philip). As he avoids his medication, he becomes ever more obsessive, anxious and paranoid, and the play documents the vulnerability associated with his condition. The acting is faultless, in particular the way in which one woman plays every single woman in the play, of which there are many. The play explores the pain and heartache of a man who is obsessed with a goal he will never achieve in a turbulent and emotional portrayal of a man with a dream.
