Andrea Mitchell
YORK actress Andrea Mitchell will be saving the day for American scholar and theatre coach Linda Gates when her play The Thistle And The Rose is staged on Monday (27/4/2026) at the York International Shakespeare Festival.
The 7.30pm performance was under threat after when Professor Gates’s acting partner, Marion Sybil Lines, suffered an accident that left her unable to perform at Theatre@41, Monkgate.
Fortunately, Andrea Mitchell was ready and willing to ensure the show could go on, duly receiving praise from Linda for mastering the script at such speed.
The Thistle And The Rose offers a portrait of the tense relationship between two queens: Elizabeth I of England and her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots, as revealed through their coded letters.
Playwright Linda Gates
United by kinship, these two powerful women were nevertheless divided by religion and ambition, both craving the throne of England.
Told in their own words, Gates’s play sheds light on a 27-year relationship that begins with Mary’s first letter to Elizabeth as she prepares to leave France to claim her Scottish throne and is marked subsequently by political manoeuvring, personal longing and rivalry.
Although they never met, through decades of correspondence – originally written in French and then translated by Elizabeth’s secretaries – the two monarchs reveal their hopes, fears, alliances, betrayals and ultimately the fatal conflict that ended with Mary’s execution.
Full details (and tickets) can be found at yorkshakes.co.uk, along with the full programme for a festival that will run until May 3.
The poster artwork for The Thistle And The Rose