Frankie Hyde as Queen Mary I and Kelvin Giles as Thomas Cranmer in BURN © Burnt Flamingo Productions
By Grace Hatchell
There are some historical women who get remembered.
Then there are historical women who get branded.
Queen Mary I did not just inherit a throne. She inherited a country at war with itself, a religion split down the middle, a family history that could give anyone a permanent migraine, and then, for her trouble, history handed her one of the most poisonous nicknames going.
Bloody Mary.
Not Mary the First Queen Regnant of England.
Not Mary, Daughter of Catherine of Aragon.
Not Mary, Survivor of Tudor Chaos.
No. Bloody Mary.
Subtle as a brick through a stained-glass window.
That is the reputation BURN is walking straight into at this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Presented by Burnt Flamingo Productions and written by Lucy Beresford-Knox, this new feminist retelling of Queen Mary I’s life arrives at Paradise in the Vault after a sell-out preview at Vault Festival 2023.
Burnt Flamingo Productions is a London-based, female-led company formed in 2024 by Lucy Beresford-Knox, Kirsty Yeung and Frankie Hyde. They make new, accessible and inclusive theatre with a proper love for Fringe spaces, small rooms and venues that do not always look like traditional theatres. Basically, they are not waiting around for someone to hand them a grand stage and a chandelier. They believe good theatre can happen anywhere if the idea is strong enough, the team has the skill, and everyone is brave enough to get stuck in. Their work is not afraid of difficult conversations or serious subjects, but they are also not the sort to stand there wearing a black polo neck and taking themselves painfully seriously. Serious theatre, yes. Pompous theatre, no thank you.
And honestly, if you are going to interrogate centuries of of misogynistic reputation-making Edinburgh feels like the place to do it. Especially when the show is being performed just moments from the historic house and final resting place of John Knox, the Scottish Reformer whose writings on women in power were not exactly what you’d call supportive. More “hysterical old Facebook comment section with a quill.”
Here is where it gets properly interesting.
Playwright Lucy Beresford-Knox counts John Knox among her ancestors. So this is not just a writer picking a historical subject and having a polite poke around with a Tudor bonnet on. This is someone reaching back into her own ancestry and saying, “Right then, let’s have a word.”
And I love that.
Because BURN does not sound like a simple historical rehabilitation job. It sounds much sharper than that. It asks how villains are made. Who gets to write them. Who benefits when a woman in power is remembered as monstrous. And why, even centuries later, we are still so comfortable reducing complicated women to neat little warning labels.
The play places Queen Mary I in a dank cell with Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, the man she has condemned to burn at the stake. He waits for either death or mercy. She challenges him to a game of chess.
That premise alone has theatrical bite.
Two people. One room. One monarch. One condemned man. One reputation already burning before the flames are even lit.
It is the sort of set-up that immediately feels claustrophobic in the best way. No grand Tudor pageant. No polite procession of ruffs and goblets. Just power, faith, fear, memory and two people staring each other down across a board.
Chess is a clever choice too, because Tudor politics was basically chess with worse wigs and more executions. Every move mattered. Every alliance shifted. Every decision had consequences. And for Mary, every decision has been judged, simplified and carved into her reputation ever since.
Now, I am not here pretending Mary I was secretly a misunderstood cinnamon roll who only wanted a quiet life and a nice candle. History is not that tidy. People died. Fires burned. Religious persecution was real and brutal.
But that is exactly why a piece like BURN sounds compelling. Because nuance is not the same as excusing. Giving a woman her full humanity does not mean sanding off the horror. It means asking why some rulers are remembered as complex, tragic, strategic or flawed, while women are so often flattened into monsters, witches, hysterics or warnings.
Funny, that.
Henry VIII can chew through wives like a man sampling pies at a village fair and still get endless documentaries about his appetites, politics and psychology.
Mary gets “Bloody.”
There is your gender studies lecture in one nickname.
What BURN seems to be doing is not wiping the blood away, but asking who held the pen when the story was written. That feels important. Not just historically, but now. Because we are still living in a world where women in power are judged through a different lens. Too cold. Too emotional. Too ambitious. Too soft. Too harsh. Too much. Never enough.
Mary I may have lived over 500 years ago, but the machinery of reputation has not exactly packed itself up and gone home.
Directed by Sophie Wilson, the production features Frankie Hyde as Queen Mary I and Kelvin Giles as Archbishop Thomas Cranmer. It marks the Edinburgh Fringe debut for Burnt Flamingo Productions, a female-led theatre company formed in 2024 with a focus on new, inclusive and exciting theatre, particularly work that gives voice to women from both the present and the past.
That mission fits this piece like a glove.
Or possibly a gauntlet.
There is something exciting about a company taking on a figure as loaded as Mary I and refusing to let her remain trapped under the old label. Not because she needs to be made saintly, but because she deserves to be made human. Difficult. Contradictory. Wounded. Powerful. Dangerous. Political. Grieving. Devout. Wrong. Right. All of it.
That is where theatre can do something history books sometimes cannot. It can put breath back into the argument. It can put a body in the room. It can make the audience sit with someone they thought they already understood and think, “Hang on. Who told me this version?”
And if BURN is performed in a vault, with that damp, enclosed atmosphere already baked into the venue, then even better. Some shows need sunshine. This one sounds like it wants stone walls, low light and the slight feeling that history is breathing down your neck.
A feminist retelling of Bloody Mary could easily go too soft, too shouty or too lecture-hall. But this one sounds like it has found a more theatrical route: a confrontation. A game. A woman and a man. A monarch and a martyr. A reputation and the machinery that built it.
That is tasty.
It also feels very Fringe in the best possible sense. Not gimmicky. Not novelty history. But a serious idea with a sharp dramatic hook. A play asking big questions from inside a small, pressurised space.
Who gets called bloody?
Who gets called brave?
Who gets remembered as a tyrant?
Who gets remembered as a reformer?
And who, centuries later, is still waiting for someone to tell the story differently?
BURN sounds like one for anyone who likes their history with teeth. Not a dusty Tudor lesson. Not a soft-focus royal tragedy. More a reckoning in a locked room, with the ghosts of church, crown and reputation circling overhead.
Mary I has spent centuries as a nickname.
This August, BURN gives her the floor.
And frankly, I would not want to be the man sitting opposite her.
BURN: Edinburgh Fringe Details
Show: BURN
Writer: Lucy Beresford-Knox
Company: Burnt Flamingo Productions
Director: Sophie Wilson
Cast: Frankie Hyde as Queen Mary I and Kelvin Giles as Archbishop Thomas Cranmer
Venue: The Vault at Paradise in the Vault, Venue 29
Dates: Saturday 8 – Saturday 15 August 2026
Time: 15:55
Duration: 1 hour
Tickets: Available through the Edinburgh Festival Fringe box office
BURN | Edinburgh Festival Fringe
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