Evening-length story ballets are box-office fodder—or would be if ballet were only to oblige. But, as Balanchine famously observed, the idiom doesn’t do mothers-in-law, much less the “murder, sex, and unsuitable lovers” (as biographer Antonia Fraser has it) that embroiled Mary, Queen of Scots. Nevertheless, Bloody Mary is the subject of the Scottish Ballet’s latest premiere, which headlined at the Edinburgh International Festival in August before taking off Scotland through October. To avoid or at least soften likely pitfalls, the enterprising company doubled up on everything. Michael P. Atkinson (Sufjan Stevens’ arranger for Justin Peck ballets) and Mikael Karlsson (composer of bouncy scores for several Alexander Ekman productions) have done do the music. Resident choreographer Sophie Laplane tasked the opera director and dramaturge James Bonas to smooth out the plots and counterplots on which the everlasting Mary intrigue depends. And Mary, Queen of Scots features two heroine-villains: Queen Elizabeth and her wayward cousin. As the ballet’s anchor, these women are its best hope. —Apollinaire Scherr

Mary, Queen of Scots plays the Theatre Royal, Glasgow, September 17–20; the Eden Court Theatre, Inverness, September 26–27; His Majesty’s Theatre, Aberdeen, October 2–4; and the Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, October 16–18.