BY ROYAL APPOINTMENT AT THE ARTS THEATRE
Jane Asher and Laura Main
Jane Asher is a superb actress with a warm smile. Once only do we see it in this production -when she takes her deserved bow at the end of this long play. As Queen Elizabeth 11 ,she sticks to the script and gives – a role with no scope for humour beyond the occasional short laugh, at her own comments
This début play by Daisy Goodwin has no room for nuance. Ostensibly we are to learn about the Queen from her clothes and the individuals who choose them. Yet the monarch has no real interest in outfits beyond their practicality. She announces regularly she would be far happier in a headscarf and jumper with her dogs and horses. The dialogue is dire- a matrix of mannered exchanges in an atmosphere of such iron restraint it is almost painful to watch. If this was life at the Palace it was tight-lipped,- fraught with anxiety and formal to the point of farce.
Despite some first class acting from the cast,
Drama is missing entirely in the first half. The script claims we will have an insight to the Queen’s personality through her clothes designed by David Robb, expertly rendered as a subtly repressed gay man,” You would be out on your ear” if that emerged.he confides. Despite the Palace being ‘stuffed with Queens.” The action is flat predictable and often tedious
The Queen’s milliner played convincingly by Matthew Cottle -he - like everyone around him endlessly repeats “ Her Majesty “at every utterance and treads on eggshells. His moving outburst when his lover is dying leaves the stage rattled with shock.
David Robb plays the Norman Hartnell role a designer before his time, with sensitive command over the quality and detail of every coat, dress and jacket. He is a professional to his fingertips yet lost - and little appreciated in the sceptical circle around ‘ Her Majesty’ a term that begins to grate after so many repetitions. He gets his Knighthood after a slip from royal grace ,when he promotes the brand in Japan,and breaks down with gratitude – and confesses the desperate knowledge that his father despised him ( never mind that he had been a war hero) His older brother , killed in action had been a ‘chip off the old block – where I was just a shaving”. The only valuable advice the Queen is allowed in this play is truly helpful, “Have you thought that your father was a really ashamed of the way he let you down?”
The trio of servants is dominated by her maid Gigi Gaunt who anticipates all her needs. Laura Main is eager devoted but vicious – known as Ak47 in the Palace. Manipulative and unpleasantly assertive Laura Main plays this character with passion – a self-promoted but self-seeking individual who feels aggrieved by the end of the play . This is an insight into what kind of havoc the Palace operatives can have on the Royal PR exercise.
But for all their hidden power and ‘friendship she never once sit down witih the Queen for a moment .
