WATCH OUT FOR
CLAIRE FOY, who is magnificent as Princess Elizabeth, later to become the Queen, in Peter Morgan’s The Crown, which he developed with Stephen Daldry and several other top-flight directors and producers.
I’ve seen all ten episodes of series one, which starts on Netflix on November 4: first instalment of a £100 million epic that will Include six chapters — ten episodes each.
The first series begins with Elizabeth’s marriage to Philip (Matt Smith) and ends with the Suez Crisis. In between, are some of the best scenes I’ve watched on TV all year.
Daldry stressed to me that The Crown isn’t a documentary. It’s made clear early on that marriage to Prince Philip was not easy; and nor was life with Princess Margaret (brilliant Vanessa Kirby). Winston Churchill (superb John Lithgow) could be tricky, too.
In one marvellous scene, the Q
with a professor, who has been helping her with matters educational, how she should handle Churchill and another minister. He tells her to ‘summon them and give them both a good dressing down’.
When she replies that such a thing would make her feel uneasy, he says: ‘They’re English, male and upper-class. A good dressing down from nanny is what they most want in life.’
It’s a great scene because it’s the moment she begins to feel confident as a monarch — though she’s less sure of herself as a wife, mother, daughter and sister.
Series two of The Crown is shooting now. FRANCES RUFFELLE (pictured), who will star as Queenie, a jazz-age flapper, in The Wild Party, which features music and lyrics by Michael John LaChiusa (who also co-wrote the book with George C. Wolfe).
This show was produced on Broadway 16 years ago, and it was one big hot mess. I saw it in New York, and part of the problem was that it was over-produced.
Much work has been done on it since then and it’s opening here at The Other Palace (remember I told you a while back that Andrew Lloyd Webber was changing the name of the St James Theatre?).
It’s the first show there since the good Lord took over, and since Paul Taylor Mills became artistic director. Drew McOnie has signed on to direct and choreograph the musical, which will run at The Other Palace from February 11 to April 1.
LaChiusa’s The Wild Party is based on Joseph Moncure March’s sex-infused poem about showgirls, party people and mobsters who get boozed and drugged up. The Other Palace is a more intimate space than a big Broadway theatre, so people who see it there will, hopefully, feel as if they’ve been invited to this party.
Lloyd Webber and Mills have been doing workshops of Lloyd Webber’s Stephen Ward musical and intend to revisit other pieces of his (as well as those by other folk) and workshop them with an eye to putting them back on a big stage.
By the way, Lloyd Webber told me that he chose The Other Palace because it’s so close to, well, the other palace. Buckingham Palace.