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.
