Fit For A Queen

   “Plenty of glamorous backstabbing, diva dissing and sexual double-crossing…has every right to claim the name Dynasty for itself.  But the title character in Betty Shamieh’s bouncy, bumpy comic melodrama is the real thing. A queen, I mean, and not just of the self-dramatizing type. Scratch that. She’s more than a queen. She’s a pharaoh, one Hatshepsut, who reigned over Egypt for 20 odd years in the 15th-century B C, and the distinction is important in a time when women rarely ruled, at least not officially. (Ancient days, huh?) A subversive speculation on the nature of power!”

Ben Brantley, The New York Times

   “Funny, both witty—Shamieh’s sharp-tongued women lacerate one another and their shared opponents—and farcical! FIT FOR A QUEEN may have attracted attention due to its election-season parallels…but it’s Senenmut who is [Shamieh’s] favorite kind of antihero: the oppressed subject who refuses to play angel, the recipient of horrors who manages to deliver some horrors of her own. She’s bundled contradictions, as the best-written characters always are: power-hungry but empathetic; hardened through experience but naive enough to be betrayed; often the smartest person in the room, so always surprised when she’s outwitted.“ 

Harvard Magazine

   “If the premise sounds like a history lesson, this play delivers a hilarious, beautifully written tale of what it takes to be a woman in power and how absolute power does inevitably corrupt absolutely…the writing is both poetic and powerful and the comedy is intelligent and sharp. The wily Senenmut has an evil streak that rivals many a Shakespearean villain.”

Tribeca Trib

   “FIT FOR A QUEEN reveals the life and reign of Hatshepsut in a way never before explored, thus ensuring Hatshepsut’s name is not lost to the ages.”

Huffington Post