Jane Asher as The Queen, surrounded by royal dresses on show in Daisy Goodwin’s By Royal Appointment. Picture: Robert Day
THERE has been a multitude of portraits of Elizabeth II, from Spitting Image to The Crown, Helen Mirren in The Queen to Moira Buffini’s play Handbagged.
Now comes By Royal Appointment, the debut play by Daisy Goodwin, creator of ITV’s historical television drama series Victoria.
The novel spin here is that By Royal Appointment is as much the story of The Dresser (played by Laura Main), The Designer (David Robb) and The Milliner (Matthew Cottle) as it is a depiction of The Queen (theatre royalty Jane Asher). More to the point, it is the story of how The Queen’s clothes spoke volumes for her.
Unfortunately, the words now wrapped around that statement are stiff and awkward, reduced in impact by their methodical, metronomic, repetitious, monotone rhythm and a chronological structure led by Laura Matthews’ Curator/narrator that undermines momentum.
No amount of high-quality acting and droll humour can save By Royal Appointment from feeling underwhelming, especially by comparison with the wit and political commentary of Buffini’s Handbagged, with its heavyweight clash between The Queen and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in younger and older years.
Handbagged still covered the passing years, but was more concentrated in its focus, whereas Goodwin’s play spans 1969 to 2022, opening and closing with The Dresser, Gigi Gaunt’s attendance at The Queen’s Funeral and taking an episodic format, where Matthews’ Curator introduces each scene with a snapshot of that year’s cultural highlights.
By Royal Appointment is based loosely on two books by Angela Kelly, The Queen’s senior dresser, advisor and confidante from 1994 to her death, albeit that Gigi is a conflation of her dressers from 1969, made into a working-class woman from Wigan with vaulting ambition and a blunt tongue for all but Her Majesty. She puts service and care first but all while serving her own goals too.
Laura Main’s Gigi Gaunt, The Dresser in By Royal Appointment. Picture: Robert Day
Humour is not her bag, whereas Goodwin gives The Queen and especially her Milliner and Designer (based on Norman Hartnell) plenty of room for quips and observations. At the same time, the playwright counters those barbs and ripostes with emotional outpourings, whether by Asher’s Queen after her uncle, Lord Mountbatten’s death and the Windsor Castle fire, or Cottle’s unguarded Australian Milliner, when his partner dies in the grip of Aids.
Then add Robb’s guarded, repressed Designer, recalling how his father favoured his chip-off-the-old-block older brother over him, a mere “shaving” despite his Military Cross and design prowess.
In a nutshell, By Royal Appointment is in part the tale of The Queen and a Buckingham Palace “stuffed with queens”, but Goodwin’s set-pieces feel mechanical in seeking a balance of humour and something deeper. The overall tone is light, and yet Main’s manipulative Dresser becomes embittered, except in the presence of The Queen.
Asher has the regal air, the manner and the stature, and a voice and look to carry off the changing of the years. In Goodwin’s dialogue, she lets us see behind the front, especially when expressing The Queen’s love for Prince Philip and how he made her heart throb, but around her the behaviour is mannered and restrained (save on occasion for Cottle’s Milliner).
Consequently the drama is as starched as a shirt collar, in keeping with the time-honoured British characteristic of chronic reserve that prevails.
By Royal Appointment is well dressed and well pressed by director Anthony Banks and designer Jonathan Fensom, but ultimately it says less than its clothes. Style over discontent.
Daniel Schumann, Lee Dean and The Arts Theatre, Cambridge, present By Royal Appointment, York Theatre Royal, until Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2pm Thursday and 2.30pm Saturday matinees; post-show discussion with cast members after Thursday’s 7.30pm show. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.