Nell Gwynn

by Jennifer Swale

seen at Shakespeare's Globe on 3 May 2017

Christopher Luscombe directs this revival of Jennifer Swale's 2015 play about the career of Nell Gwynn who began life in the seedy streets of Covent Garden and became the mistress of King Charles II. Laura Pitt-Pulford plays Nell and Ben Righton the king, with able support from the company playing courtiers and actors.

The play is not an historical documentary, but is broadly accurate in depicting Nell's career and her undoubted charm, skill as an actress, and personal attachment to the king, far less mercenary or politically ambitious than his more aristocratic mistresses (embodied in Lady Castlemaine). It cleverly makes use of dramatic conventions and the introduction of women on the stage to involve the audience in the spirit of the times; the Globe's groundlings in the pit make the opening scene a dazzling example of the excitement a good performance in this theatre can evoke, even though it was decidedly cold on this afternoon and the number of groundlings was perhaps the smallest I have seen.

From Nell's early intervention from the pit to help a stage-struck young actor to stumble through an elaborate prologue, to her own induction into the world of acting - projecting the voice, learning the 'attitudes' (dozens, apparently involving the left eyebrow)- to her being noticed and then favoured by the king, we see a self-assured no-nonsense young woman adeptly finding her way through male prejudice and hypocrisy. No wonder King Charles finds her down-to-earth honesty so refreshing.

The play has fun in pointing up the exaggerations of (what is known of) Restoration acting styles, though large gestures and good projection are in fact essential to a successful Globe production since the audience needs to be encouraged to focus on the significant speaker or action without much help from lighting cues. I thought at first that this cast had mastered the art exceptionally well, but then I became aware that there were discreet microphones hidden in the wigs and occasionally voices were just too loud to be just the result of natural projection - and coming from behind me. A pity, as most of the time the sound was indeed well managed.

Laura Pitt-Pulford is an engaging Nell fully able to carry the show, which is something of a star vehicle in its own way. Ben Righton makes an imposing if occasionally rather stiff King Charles, well able to hand le the witticisms but perhaps too much encased in regal stillness. However, their personal chemistry is nicely set off against the political machinations surrounding the king, and Nell's sense of loss and grief at the king's death forms a quiet coda to the high spirits of earlier parts of the play. These are conveyed in some very catchy songs which are actually pastiches of the kind of ditties - bawdy or otherwise - current at the time.

There are also some timely anachronisms and knowing jokes - linking Charles's views about diplomatic relations with Europe to the current Brexit controversies - and also a very sentimentalised appearance by a King Charles spaniel reducing almost the whole audience to appreciative oohs and ahs. In short, the play is at times a romp, at times an entertaining look at a formative period of English stage history, and at times a plea for honesty and parity in human relationships. At the Globe, and with this high-spirited company, it is above all very entertaining.