JULIA  KEMP, director, introduces our June play

Picture the scene. An envious, embittered Queen Mother, grieving both for the death of her lover, and for her diminishing influence over the son she at last bore after 27 humiliating years of failure to produce an heir for France. 

Louis: the young and handsome king-in-waiting, who at last accedes to the throne, a throne he will occupy, he believes, as the very embodiment of God on earth. Can she resist his attempts to cut the royal apron strings? How can he gain the absolute financial and political power of which he dreams?

There is Louis's gender-confused younger brother, the result of a bizarre parental experiment, who is more interested in sharing make-up tips with the maids than in politics or statecraft.  What possible use can he be to the new king?

A princess from England, the daughter of a murdered king (Charles I), whose relief at making a royal marriage after years on the run quickly turns to dismay on the realisation that her new husband owns more dresses than she does.  Is it any wonder that she soon looks elsewhere?

A 16-year old virgin, devout and modest, forced by the Queen Mother to pretend to be the king's mistress in order to divert attention from the affair he is conducting with his own sister-in-law.  How could the Queen Mother have predicted that the King and her puppet ingénue would fall deeply in love?

A charismatic and powerful finance minister and trusted royal advisor, whose luxurious lifestyle is funded by the embezzlement of state funds on an astonishing scale.  He has inside knowledge.   He  has  been  indispensable  in  shoring  up the shaky finances of the royal family.  They like him.  Surely he is unassailable. Or is he?

And finally, a pen-pushing courtier, the snake in the grass, who works tirelessly to drip poison into the ear of the young king with the aim of exposing the extent of his colleague's corruption and engineering his downfall.  But his target is the king's right-hand man. How can he succeed without losing his own head?

I wouldn't blame you for thinking that this sounds like the stuff of soap opera, or perhaps a rather racy bodice-ripping novel.  In fact, it isn't.  The extraordinary thing about Power as a play is the sheer lack of artistic license that Nick Dear has taken in bringing these characters, and the events portrayed, so brilliantly to the stage.  Were you to conduct the smallest amount of research into contemporary accounts of the time it would reveal that the scenario I have described above is by no means embellishment of real events by a playwright attempting to make a "history play" attractive to a modern audience.

So, thanks largely to the real-life machinations, peculiarities, plots, deceptions and excesses of the royal family and their circle at the beginning of the reign of Louis XIV of France, I can promise you an evening of exceptionally stimulating entertainment!  Nick Dear's script is intelligent, stylish, fast-paced, engrossing, lucid, and often very funny; and as jaw-dropping as it all might seem, the play is genuinely educational.

Donning the sumptuous costumes and wigs are a lively and talented cast comprising GWT stalwarts and relative newcomers. Claire Kingshott is the imperious Queen Mother, Anne of Austria, whilst Ben Gaston acquires divine status as Louis XIV, the Sun King himself. Dominic Clarke is the frock-wearing Philippe, Duc D'Orléans, with Helen Gaston as his disappointed bride, Henriette D'Angleterre. Lauren Oliver is our sacrificial virgin, Louise de La Vallière, and completing the cast are David Webster as Nicolas Fouquet, the fantastically rich and influential Superintendent of Finance, and John Wilson as his relentless nemesis, Jean-Baptiste Colbert.

Please join us for Power in June and see just how differently the other half lived!

BILL  BRAY  explains how the royals did it.  Nick Dear provides an object lesson.

Playwright Nick Dear has written a number of plays using historical subjects.  He realised that 18th Century France offered much dramatic material. The revolution of 1789  is highly dramatic, of course; the events leading to it from 1650 form Dear's chosen territory for Power.

Louis XIV, the Sun King, began his reign in 1651. From early childhood it had been instilled in him that the king's authority is absolute. This meant that even the most influential figures at Court could be disposed of on a whim and none was more powerful and wealthy than Nicolas Fouquet,  the omnipotent Superintendant of Finances, whose financial manipulations  might well be  a model for present-day Enron and Goldman Sachs . In 1661 the king was entertained lavishly at Fouquet's magnificent chateau at Vaux-le-Vicomte (which inspired Louis to build Versailles). Both Fouquet and Louis were patrons of Molière and an early play of his, Les Fâcheux  (The Mad) was part of the entertainment provided for the king. Fouquet made a mistake in flaunting his wealth, leading to jealous rivalry in the king.  Within the month Fouquet was arrested and Louis decided that he would take over the state's finances himself, with some assistance from Colbert, an upstart and scheming accountant who kept a sensibly low profile while becoming indispensible to the king. After a three-year trial, Fouquet was thrown into perpetual prison and there he died in 1680.

In Power Nick Dear uses his playwriting skills and love of language (sometimes rather strong for some tastes) to bring out the dramatic conflicts and ironic nuances in the situation of the French court, which in many ways  mirrors events between Henry VIII and Cardinal Thomas Wolsey in England. Wolsey built Hampton Court but when he failed to win for the king a divorce from Catherine of Aragon, he lost the magnificent palace to Henry. Whereas Henry was a bullying monster, Louis  was  a man of obsessive rules of etiquette and formal behaviour in the French manner.

Power was  a big success at the National Theatre in 2003, with great acting opportunities for Robert  Lindsay as Fouquet and Barbara Jefford as Queen Anne, Regent-Mother of Louis. Nick Dear has had other stage successes and has pursued his career with international opportunities in other media. Power is a wonderful theatre piece to bring this season to a close.