Gaudy and saucy, it’s Carry On Nell Gwynn
Nell Gwynn (Apollo Theatre) Verdict: Girl power turns panto ★★★✩✩ Mrs Henderson Presents (Noel Coward) Verdict: Blitz spirit goes topless ★★★★✩
Girl power is getting a good workout in london’s West End, with transfers of two shows about women doing it for themselves.
The first is Jessica Swale’s frisky play about the 17th- century actress Nell Gwynn, which stars Gemma Arterton in the title role.
The other is the musical version of the Bob Hoskins and Judi Dench film Mrs Henderson Presents — the one about Soho’s tiny Windmill Theatre, kept open by highbrow erotica in the Thirties and Forties.
The Nell Gwynn rags-toriches story originally starred the enchanting Gugu Mbatharaw as the proto Spice Girl who gives up being a Cheapside moll to flog oranges in london’s theatres, then finds work as an actress and winds up with a steady job performing in King Charles ii’s boudoir.
it’s a ripping yarn in a world of cartoon sexual politics where even if you’re flattened by the wheels of power, you can still pop up and pull yourself back into shape.
Outdoors at Shakespeare’s Globe, Gwynn’s irrepressible rise seemed bawdy and joyfully exuberant, but indoors on Shaftesbury Avenue it looks more like a pantomime. Still, it’s never less than rollicking good fun, with gaudy characters including Gwynn’s sozzled Cockney mother, satirical set-pieces lampooning the King’s rival mistresses, and lashings of Carry On gags.
Arterton tosses herself into this giddy, Girl’s Own fantasy, flagging up the risque jokes with winks, pouts, rolling eyes and a wiggling bust.
i could have done with more grit invested in Nell, who is pitched somewhere between Barbara Windsor and Eliza Doolittle. But Arterton certainly rises to the occasion — especially late on, when she lays off the comedy and turns on the taps.
Until then it’s the batting eyelids that drive her performance, reducing long-haired hunk Jay Taylor to rubble as the leading actor of the day, Charles Hart.
David Sturzaker as Charles ii, though, is the real star turn for me. Where others serve up thick slices of theatrical ham, he is stately and boyish, potent and understated — with a wry twinkle in his eye.
This is not, however, an occasion for psychological insight and the tone of Christopher luscombe’s hearty production is best characterised by the wobbly flats, giant tassels and dripping velvet of Hugh Durrant’s louche design.
it may not be a defining show for Arterton, but it remains a very merry one.
MRS Henderson
Presents is a more compelling display of girl power at the Noel Coward Theatre. What’s striking about the show is less George Fenton and Simon Chamberlain’s cheery tunes or Don Black’s diamond lyrics, or even Andrew Wright’s zippy choreography, but the fact that its topless tableaux appear to be a hit less with dirty old men than with women of all ages.
This is partly because, as writer-director Terry Johnson says, it’s more empowering than exploitative.
Each of the English roses on parade is played with pride by a gutsy woman. it’s a performance that sets itself alongside Calendar Girls and The Full Monty, showing ordinary people breaking down personal boundaries. Tracie Bennett brings steel and melancholy to her role as the impresario, and ian Bartholomew is exasperated yet dogged as her theatre manager. But it’s Emma Williams who emerges most impressively as the tea- girl turned model running an emotional gamut from timidity to fearlessness.