The Crown Jewels at the Garrick Theatre – review

One shouldn’t prejudge a show but the tacky poster design, a delayed press night and a title that suggests it’ll be heavy on blokeish innuendo (it’s written by Men Behaving Badly writer Simon Nye and stars Al Murray, a comedian known for his ‘landlord’ persona). It centres on ‘Merry Monarch’ Charles II, who didn’t build up the best initial impression of the crown jewels, but it doesn’t make a convincing case for broad comedy being the best way to tell this tale.

After many years as a minor thorn in Charles’s side with crazy ideas about Ireland being ruled by the Irish, on 9 May 1671, ‘Colonel’ Thomas Blood (Aidan McArdle) and his henchmen attempted to steal the jewels from the Tower of London. Amazingly, they were pardoned and Blood was given a job at court. It’s hard to believe that they were quite as blundering as the gang (including Neil Morrisey as Puritan-aligned Captain Perrot) depicted here, as there must have been something about them that the king admired.

Sean Foley’s production is carried along by toweringly silly Carry On stuff in which the fourth wall is frequently broken panto-style, and the ‘rude’ parts aren’t so much innuendo as laid out bare. There’s some comic potential in verbose elderly ex-solider Talbot Edwards (also Murray) and his wife (Mel Giedroyc) as the guardians of the crown jewels, resembling a less malicious and more bumbling version of the Thénardiers in Les Mis (Mrs Edwards sees potential in making a bit of extra cash by selling inadvertently suggestive pastries based on the sceptre and orbs). The way in which the jewels, kept in a basement cupboard, really were shown to random members of the public on a walk-in basis is practically the most extraordinary detail in the whole affair.

There’s no glamour to be had in the Tower but Giedroyc does get the chance to wear a nice dress in her appearance as a French noblewoman engaged in a flirtation with the King, and who makes passes at a few male audience members. Musical theatre princess Carrie Hope Fletcher shows off her powerful voice singing Grant Olding’s songs as a Cockney royal mistress likely based on Nell Gwyn and as the Edwards’ stroppy, unmarriageable daughter Elizabeth, who finds it isn’t easy finding a man when you live in a tower that’s also a prison and a menagerie. As sex objects, culinary inept wives, and daughters to be married off, it isn’t the best show in which to be a woman.

With a strangulated accent, Murray shows the narcissism beneath the jolly kingly façade and kills time with a stand-up routine heavy in audience participation (avoid the front row if that isn’t your thing). There’s a lot of tiresome anti-Dutch sentiment (the French aren’t hate figures here as they were very good to Charles after his father lost his head). When Charles and Blood have their tete a tete, it’s rather an anticlimax.

It’s colourful to look at; the costumes are good, as is the revolving set that conveys the different locations (designed by Michael Taylor). But what a waste this show is. The ideal vehicle to tell this story would be a rollicking TV miniseries with lots of flashbacks to Charles’ and Blood’s eventful early lives and with space for nuance to explore the historical details. The final number proclaiming that Britons are best and all other nations are inferior is surely meant to be ironic but, like much on offer here, it’s too bland to land a punch.