Nell Gwynn at Shakespeare North Playhouse – review

She’s better known these days as the playwright responsible for giving Paddington Bear his big break on a West End stage, but almost a decade ago, Jessica Swale was premiering her rumbustious life story of the famous Restoration orange-seller-turned-actress Nell Gwynn. And it feels as if the passion she expressed then for putting unheard voices centre stage is more necessary than ever. Nearly four centuries on from the events of the play, it sadly still feels uncommon for a woman to be leading the company.

In a co-production between Shakespeare North, Keswick’s Theatre by the Lake and Storyhouse Chester, where the show travels after its run on Merseyside, this Nell Gwynn is led in boisterous, bantering fashion by Rose Shalloo, the former prostitute’s Cheapside roots always showing through no matter how high in society she rises. Even from the heights of the king’s bedchamber, she’s never more than a courtier’s whisper away from ruin, and Shalloo smartly exploits that sense of reckless danger.

She has the luxury of being surrounded by a company that revels in their various roles, from mean fellow actors to the monarch himself, and there’s a Hogarthian feel to the lively characters and rompy storytelling. Stanton Wright is beautifully put out as the erstwhile go-to actor for female roles, his nose spectacularly out of joint at the arrival of this “hideous new-fangled creature” – an actress. Guy Woolf’s Charles II ranges magnificently from spoiled brat to heartbroken lover, joyfully picking up laughs along the way. And Adam Clifford relishes both the elderly adviser Lord Arlington and the theatre manager Thomas Killigrew.

The rest of the eight-strong cast are equally adept, with Celia Cruwys-Finnigan drawing distinctions between her various roles as Nell’s sidelined sister and two of the king’s other mistresses (one of them French), and Elliot Harper offering a superb stiff upper lip as the leading man who puts Nell on the stage, only to be spurned as her lover in favour of the king. Even the smaller parts are carefully portrayed and the sense of an ensemble all pulling together is palpable.

Director Bryony Shanahan wrestles with the in-the-round setting and comes out mostly on top, aided by judicious lighting (Mark Distin Webster) and props serving as set (designer Jessica Curtis), while the cast also deliver a handful of songs by Swale and composer Candida Caldicot, accompanying themselves on guitars, accordion, harpsichord and percussion. To be honest – versatility of the performers aside – the musical numbers don’t really add much and could be an easy candidate for reducing the near three-hour running time.

But it’s a fun and energetic production of a play with a potent message that still resonates – more’s the pity. Paddington might be flavour of the month right now, but Nell Gwynn was making her point long before the bear stepped into the limelight.