Playhouse Creatures at the Orange Tree Theatre – review

The title says it all. April De Angelis’s 1993 play is the story of the lives of the actresses who first took to the stage in England in the 1660s and transformed theatre as we know it. Their pioneering path meant that they were both committed to the playhouse – and defined by it, as goddesses and monsters, artists and whores.

The most famous today is Nell Gwynne, mistress of King Charles II, who reopened theatres after the dark days of Puritan rule and allowed a new dispensation with women in the starring parts. She stars here too, in an appealingly open performance by Zoe Brough, as one of a quintet of actresses changing the world.

De Angelis’s writing allows them each a moment in the spotlight, offering glimpses of their on-stage performances as well as intimate moments behind the scenes. There’s Mrs Betterton (Anna Chancellor), in thrall to her never-seen husband, ageing and frightened of becoming irrelevant, but a mentor to the younger players. Then there’s Katherine Kingsley’s pugnacious Mrs Marshall, whose affair with an Earl has made her vulnerable to abuse, but who is striving for her own freedom.

The group is rounded out by Doll Common (a wryly knowing Dońa Croll), a maid of all work and resigned to her lot – “I’m either the dead one under the cloak or else I’m sweeping” and Nicole Sawyerr’s tragic Mrs Farley, who turns from Puritanical preacher to stage star, but whose career and life are undone by an unwanted pregnancy.

That’s a lot of character and a lot of history to squeeze into a 90-odd-minute running time, and De Angelis’s treatment of both history and character is necessarily sketchy; the second half, in particular, crams in too much incident with too little depth. But in the capable hands of director Michael Oakley, the entire thing rollicks along with as much infectious pleasure as a Restoration comedy, and the actresses seize their roles with evident delight and great skill.

Chancellor in particular is a revelation as Mrs Betterton. Her timing is immaculate; she holds a line in her hand like a precious jewel and gets extraordinary humour out of a raise of an eyebrow or a dismissive line. “It’s a small part with quite a lot of belching,” she says at one point, a look of glee in her eye as she gives a rendition of her Widow Wellfed.

But the genius of the performance is the way that although Chancellor makes every movement funny – Betterton specialises in placing her head at different points on the clock to communicate changing emotions – she also richly suggests the disappointment of a woman who has lived her life without acknowledgement of her own talent, and whose parts are divided into “assorted queens and wives, faithful marked with blue stripes, unfaithful with red circles.”

Kingsley too magnificently suggests the frustrations of a proto-feminist who longs for power but is constantly thwarted by a society that still regards women as chattels and their morals as a matter for public debate.

When the pair of them march on as Amazons, in designer Fotini Dimou’s cleverly suggestive costumes, the play and their performances conjure a strong sense of the theatre as it was – and offer a wonderfully entertaining play for our own times.