Playhouse Creatures at Orange Tree Theatre review: this historical romp is bracing, heady fun

Life for London’s first professional actresses was punishingly hard, but their world is explored with wit, warmth and a wholly apt, heightened staginess in this revival of April de Angelis’s 1993 play. Viewed as sexual objects, at risk from lovers’ caprices and the encroachment of age, these characters – including the infamous Nell Gwyn and the renowned Mrs Betterton - nonetheless changed the face and the course of theatre. Two hours in their company is bracing, heady fun.

We’re at the King’s Men’s company, when women have only just replaced young boys in female roles on stage following the 1660 Restoration under Charles II. Anna Chancellor’s “Mrs B”, wife of actor-manager Thomas Betterton and long versed in rehearsing him and even going onstage in disguise if another actor was sick, queens it over her juniors. Whether playing the heroines of Shakespeare or Otway, she believes the head should be held at specific positions, as if on a clockface, for each emotion: “Despair: five past twelve.”

Mrs Marshall (a lusty Katherine Kingsley) spends most of her time hurling insults at cat-callers, some of them friends of her vengeful ex-lover, the Earl of Oxford. Doll Common (Doña Croll), a servile backstage Jill-of-all-trades who hasn’t changed her clothes for ten years, remembers when the theatre was a bearpit. The memory of the bears – whipped, chained, de-clawed and forced to dance – stand as metaphors for the pioneering females.

Youngest of the troupe is Mrs Farley (Nicole Sawyerr): life as an actress and the king’s plaything saved her from starvation after her puritan preacher father died of plague. Until, that is, comely, spunky Nell Gwynn (Zoe Brough) comes along, with her quick wit and lewd tongue, catching the monarch’s eye in what she calls “the tit parts”.

Nicole Sawyerr (Mrs Farley) (Ellie Kurttz)

All competing for fame or favour, all mindful that a new generation will soon supplant them, they form a sorority of sorts. Most tellingly, they pull together to address Mrs Farley’s potentially career-ending pregnancy, which also marks a darkening of the mood in the second half. The men, all offstage, are enigmatic or downright malign figures.

There remain plenty of laughs throughout, though, particularly from the stately Chancellor, who can wring comedy gold from the most offhand line. She also gives us wry versions of speeches by Cleopatra and Lady Macbeth. The latter prompts Doll to ask Mrs B if she’s actually gone mad. “No,” Chancellor snorts grandly, “I’m just eccentric.”

The prevailing tone of Michael Oakley’s production is bold and brash – there’s a swordfight, impressive for a theatre this small – the acting vivid and declamatory, recalling an era when actors had to shout over audience chatter, or worse. Even so, the magnificent Kingsley and the touching Sawyerr could perhaps dial Mrs Marshall and Mrs Farley back a bit.

Croll is very funny as Doll but tends to lapse into generic proletarian chuntering. Brough, the least experienced of the cast, gives a performance of unfinished and slightly unfocussed vivacity as Nell, but she has real presence.

Playhouse Creatures reminded me oddly of the current stage adaptation of Annie Ernaux’s The Years. Both feature all-female casts of five, both track women through pivotal historic periods and different stages of life, and both are staged with flair (The Years by a woman, Playhouse Creatures by a man). Neither of them could have existed without the breakthrough made by Nell, Mrs B et al.

Orange Tree Theatre, to April 12; orangetreetheatre.co.uk