Great Britain's Queen Elizabeth II has been described as the "Silent Celebrity." She doesn't give media interviews on personal topics and she is constitutionally required to keep her political opinions to herself. So no one knows much about her, really.

Which is why Peter Morgan's play about her weekly meetings with prime ministers, "The Audience," should be fascinating. After all, it comes from the same team that brought us the Academy Award-winning film "The Queen" — writer Morgan, director Stephen Daldry, and Helen Mirren as the indomitable Elizabeth herself. We might expect that the play would be a further exploration of the Queen's character, regrets, thoughts, desires.

Instead, it is a love letter to the queen as the figurehead of the British Commonwealth. She's exactly who we might want a queen to be — smart and funny, gracious and poised, speaking always for her country. She voices no regrets and expresses her opinions only with the occasional raise of an eyebrow or a pointed look. This makes for a regal symbol, but very dull theater.

There are sketched-in appearances from many of the best known PM's over the last 60 years, who each share a portion of their innermost thoughts with Elizabeth: John Major complains he wants to be ordinary; Winston Churchill is patronizing; Margaret Thatcher rages.

Yet the only inkling we get of the Queen's private ruminations come via occasional ghostly appearances by her younger self (played alternately by Elizabeth Teeter and Sadie Sink). That young Elizabeth — vibrant, practically smelling of fresh air as she rolls in on her bicycle — seems aghast at how the current Elizabeth has trapped herself in a cavernous audience room week after week, unable (or unwilling) to express herself.

If only Morgan had imagined a similarly opinionated older Elizabeth — someone who seemed to want something — this would have been much more satisfying for, well, the audience.

"The Audience" is at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre.