Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton inspire the new Steppenwolf play ‘Duchess! Duchess! Duchess!’
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On April 23, 2018, the former Kate Middleton, now known as the Duchess of Cambridge, emerged from St. Mary’s Hospital in London with a precious bundle, officially known as Prince Louis of Cambridge. She blinked into a bank of cameras and a bevy of reporters. Her appearance was, as customary, immaculate. But if you stare at the picture, you can, of course, see the exhaustion of a new mother who had given birth just seven hours before.
Meanwhile, a young writer named Vivian J.O. Barnes was sitting in her home in Virginia preparing to pursue an M.F.A. in playwriting at the University of California, San Diego.
“I remember that photo really burning a hole in my brain,” Barnes said from San Diego on Tuesday, recalling how she winced at how its subject had not been allowed to leave quietly and go home with her baby for some well-deserved rest.
“Her hair and makeup are perfect,” Barnes said. “But she is having to present herself to the public right after having given birth. I remember thinking, ‘Who is making her do that? What is she doing that for?’”
The sticky photo was part of Barnes’ inspiration for “Duchess! Duchess! Duchess!” which Chicago Steppenwolf Theatre Company will stream as part of its Steppenwolf NOW virtual series, beginning on March 10.
The inspiration for the other duchess? Meghan Markle, the architect of the so-called “Megxit” and a woman who first seemed destined to reform the musty British Royal Family, but ended up making a high-profile departure from the working life of royalty, along with her husband, Harry, the Duke of Sussex and the younger child of Princess Diana.
“I remember being excited when Meghan Markle came along,’ Barnes said. “Part of me was thinking, ‘She is going to tear that place down,’ and the other part of me was thinking, ‘She had better get out of there because this is not going to end well for her.”
In the end, Markle put two duchesses together. Well, kinda.
In “Duchess! Duchess! Duchess!,” both characters are Black (as is the playwright), and they aren’t so much versions of these two famous women as fictional characters inspired by them.
As Barnes describes the piece, which plays for about 35 minutes and will star Celeste M. Cooper and Sydney Charles, the action is set in a stylized world that has some similarity to a constitutional monarchy but it not intended to be seen literally as such. “It’s royal,” Barnes said, “but also an alternate universe.”
So Barnes, who is still a 24-year-old graduate student but off to a racing start with her playwriting career, has imagined two Black duchesses, one of whom, a veteran of the title, is teaching a newcomer about the usual strict rules of engagement. The two characters are not that far apart in age and Barnes seems to have wanted to make a mirror of the fraternal relationship between William and Harry: it will be as is Markle had an older sister who had married the other brother first, and is schooling her younger sister on how to behave once she, too, marries into the firm.
“The main issues at hand,” Barnes said. “involve the place of the women in the institution, what is being asked of them and what they are and are not willing to do.”
“Duchess! Duchess! Duchess!” has only been performed once: it was part of Barnes’ first year at UCSD, which is where a visitor from Steppenwolf caught the work. Barnes said the short duration of the piece meant that she didn’t expect a professional theater, let alone a company of the caliber of Steppenwolf, to produce the show. But the pandemic and the need for virtual productions has been kind to short-duration works, especially pieces with small casts. In this case, both of the actors filmed their half of the scenes in their own apartments, with Steppenwolf’s technical staff then putting the footage together (under the direction of Weyni Mengesha) to make it appear like a continuous scene.
Clearly, Barnes has figured out a play with a close relationship to the zeitgeist, given the popularity of such TV shows as “Bridgerton” and, of course, “The Crown,” both of which both trade on the global fascinating with the British monarchy and take variously satirical and critical approaches to what underpins the institution. One indication of the fertility of that field is that Netflix actually spent more on the production budget for “The Crown” than the British government spent last year on subsidizing the monarchy itself. And that, of course, doesn’t include Netflix’s fiscal underpinning of the new Stateside life of Harry and Meghan.
Who are, it seems, both much happier now.
“You might see my play as a darker version of what might have happened if Meghan had stayed,” Barnes said.
“Duchess! Duchess! Duchess!” begins March 10 and requires a Steppenwolf NOW membership. For more details, visit steppenwolf.org.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
