23. Apr, 2021

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What larks!  This was a romp through history the like of which has never been seen before, or even at all in the real Russian court of Catherine (later the eponymous Great) and Peter the Questionable. (He still didn't know what he wanted to be when he grew up).  Huzzah!  Smash a few glasses to the ground or chuck them into the fireplace round about here.  It's de rigeur for palace protocol.  Parts of 'The Great' were true, most of it a fantasy version of real historical figures and happenings.  I mean, training butterflies, as Peter's Aunt Elizabeth was doing?  Not that it stopped her from committing a bit of needful child throat slitting when required, so as to off a rival heir to Peter.  Dialogue and humour were modern, with a nod to the style of the day with Catherine archly saying 'indeed!"  from time to time.

The wigs were wonderful, balanced precariously on top of people's actual hair, as were most of the court's mental states under them.  Peter was crude, crass, coarse and almost, but only almost, touchingly narcissistic.  He believed, indefatigably, that everybody loved him.  Catherine had cheeks rouged like a Dutch doll, and ambition.  Mostly ambition.  There was a hideous prelate, a maid who was really a noblewoman, noblewomen who were ninnies and a terrible war with Sweden.  That was one of the true bits.

Huzzah!  I loved it.  Bonkers, riotous and full of hilarious bathos.  Peter, almost on his deathbed after a bout of arsenic poisening courtesy of the jealous friend whose wife he had been openly bonking, is asked by Catherine how he is.  Moved by his terrible plight, she begs him not to die, having decided she doesn't want to have him assassinated quite yet after all.

"Oh, you know" he answers casually.  "Blood pouring out of every orifice.  It's not good."

Eventually, the army rises in the form of a very drunk general, but that's entirely in keeping with 'The Great'.  It was all Great!  Huzzah!  Oh, better send out for more glasses...