A NIGHT WITH CHARLES II’S MISTRESS? YES, PLEASE!
Nell Gwynn (Shakespeare’s Globe) Verdict: Great sport NELL GWYNN was one of the first ladies on the 17th-century stage and went on to become the first lady in Charles II’s boudoir. Not bad for someone who started out as a Cheapside moll flogging oranges to rowdy punters in the theatre.
No surprise, then, that Jessica Swale’s warm and hearty new play reinvents her as a thoroughly modern model of social mobility who stuck up for her sisters.
Director Christopher Luscombe also pulls off a minor coup with Gugu Mbatha-Raw in the title role — a young actress first seen as Martha Jones’s sister in Dr Who.
She is alluring, assured, waif-like yet feisty in a rags to riches story that sees her plucked out from the sweaty crowd by the great thespian of the day Charles Hart (a magisterial Jay Taylor).
Hart’s interests aren’t entirely platonic, but he is a generous soul who wisely concedes defeat to the lovestruck monarch once Charles sets eyes on Nell. Swale’s bawdy play is a melee of puns, histrionic theatricality and court satire, mixed up with colourful social history, including a brassy turn from Sarah Woodward as Nell’s gin-swilling mum.
There is frothy song and dance, including one number in which Nell makes fun of the gigantic hat of Charles’s pushy French mistress. The result falls between Restoration comedy, My Fair Lady, Carry On films and Blackadder.
The plot is sustained by a succession of gregarious characters. Best among these is Mbatha-Raw’s Nell, scoffing at going topless and preferring to use wit and personality to smooth her path to the top.
No wonder David Sturzaker as the theatre-loving King falls under her spell, but he never loses sight of his lofty social and political responsibilities.
Sasha Waddell glows as Charles’s mistress and Greg Haiste glowers as the displaced actor who played the women’s roles before Nell’s arrival, while David Rintoul fumes as the King’s plummy enforcer.
But the show stealer is Amanda Lawrence as Nell’s confidante; a reluctant actress who clowns around using her magnificent nose and gawping mouth to subversive comic effect.
Eager, dim and devoted all at once she nearly upstages her Nell herself. Great sport.