The Last of the Duchess

Synopsis

In an upstairs bedroom in a mansion near Versailles, Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor lies near the end of her life. Based on Caroline Blackwood’s biographical portrait of the Duchess, the play’s subject was soon eclipsed by the formidable attorney Maitre Suzanne Blum. Is this eccentric and energetic French presence determined to protect the Duchess - or perhaps hide unscrupulous manipulation of her money and fame?

Our Review:

Matt Trueman - 27 October 2011

You wait years for a drama about Wallis Simpson and then three turn up at once. Last Christmas, she popped into 65 Eaton Place during an episode of Upstairs Downstairs and, this year, she got a biopic of her own – albeit somewhat derided – courtesy of Madonna.

Now here she is in the opening dream sequence of Nicholas Wright’s latest play, leaning louchely against the mantelpiece of her Boulogne chateaux and fixing herself up with small buckets of ‘vawd-ca.’

That is indeed the last we see of the Duchess. For the rest of the play, adapted from Lady Caroline Blackwood’s book of the same name, she is bedridden upstairs, rumoured to be senile, shrivelled and mute. Possibly even dead.

In April 1980, Blackwood was dispatched by the Sunday Times to profile the Duchess of Windsor, only to be denied access by her lawyer and protector Maitre Suzanne Blum (Sheila Hancock, outmoded and frosty as granita). Inste...

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Latest User Review

David Baxter - 24 November 2011:

Everything about The Last of the Duchess radiates the highest quality: writing, direction, acting, set design; the only surprise is that it is being staged at Hampstead rather than the Lyttelton as it has all the best characteristics of a National Theatre production. Nicholas Wright's tale of an aristocratic journalist's attempts to write a story about the ailing Duchess of Windsor who is fiercely protected by her snobbish lawyer crackles with wit but also resonates with our unhealthy obsession with celebrity and has some very topical things to say about press standards. Somewhat surprisingly, given her reputation, Wright portrays an unusually sympathetic Suzanne Blum, suggesting that, far from exploiting the Duchess, she fought to prevent the truth about her drinking, money and health problems becoming public knowledge. Sheila Hancock is best known for comic roles but she is wonderful as Blum, although I wasn't genuinely chilled by her threat to have the journalist killed. Anna Chancellor is superb as the dishevelled Lady Caroline, a borderline alcoholic like the Duchess, and there is excellent support from Angela Thorne as Diana Moseley, effortlessly charming despite maintaining her odious politics, and John Heffernan as Michael Bloch protecting his beloved Blum as much as she protects and loves the Duchess. This is one of the best new plays of the year and deserves to be seen by a far wider audience than is possible at the Hampstead....

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