Maria Stuart, King's Theatre, Edinburgh

Two queens in the hive

For two historical figures who never actually met in real life, Mary, Queen of Scots and Elizabeth, Queen of England have been making up for it in Edinburgh. First we had Donizetti's fizzing operatic encounter, now we have the original Schiller version, in German, of their meeting in Maria Stuart. After a certain amount of frippery and gimmickry in the drama programme, the event will surely be remembered as the crowning glory of this year's festival. Solid, serious and engaging in every respect, Andrea Breth's austerely ardent production of Schiller's romantic tragedy for the Vienna Burgtheater (of which she is a resident director) pieces together a complicated jigsaw with great integrity, a quality that extends to the entire creative team and cast.

Silence may have been considered a womanly virtue at the time, but in the two lead roles Corinna Kirchhoff as a passionate, excitable Mary and Elisabeth Orth as a lusty yet strangely maternal Elizabeth exercise their respective wits and power with alternating sprightly confidence and gnaw-ing self-doubt. True, Schiller, who described the two queens to Goethe as "splendid dramatic characters", provides dazzling monologues and surefire dialogue. But in their verbal energy these two imperious queens somehow manage to invest his words with even more colour.

In the battle between the throneless Mary Stuart and her reigning "bastard" relative, the flames of which are fanned by their private (all male) advisors and public supporters, the message is clear. Whatever the factors of kingdom, country, family and religion, the dispute boils down to a battle of wills between these two conflicting personalities. In Breth's reading of the text you feel that were the two women not mere pawns in a complex political game, matters might have been resolved very differently, though not necessarily for the better. As it is, their relationships with the people around them are highly charged emotionally and also, perhaps surprisingly, physically.

In an excellent cast Nicholas Ofczarek stands out as a hot-headed Mortimer, tumbling feverishly on top of Mary, while Michael König's cunning Leicester – whose buttocks Elizabeth absent-mindedly fondles as she muses – is isolated on the dangerous high-wire on which he has positioned himself between the two queens. If Martin Schwab, as Talbot, provides the sort of wise counsel every queen should have, Gertraud Jesserer's Hanna Kennedy is equally touching in her fierce loyalty to her monarch.

Giving both queens equal measure and position – Mary confined to her prison tower, Elizabeth forced into a corner, her sovereignty and very person under threat as long as Mary lives – the acting area, in what is an effective visual metaphor, is clearly divided into two camps. In the opening ransacking of Mary's private desk just one section of Annette Murschetz's stark set design is revealed. Another part of the picture later reveals Elizabeth's court, not always what it seems, with its sliding panels and ante-chambers. Only for the stand- off at Fotheringhay is the stage completely opened up.

Gripping in its intensity and intelligence, the production points up the play's perpetual topicality in its portrayal of religious and political conflict, fired by personal ambition and diplomatic intrigue.