Tag: Anthony Banks

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Dressed for multiple occasions, Jane Asher tackles regal role as The Queen in By Royal Appointment at York Theatre Royal

Jane Asher as The Queen and Laura Main as The Dresser in Daisy Goodwin’s play The Dresser, on tour at York Theatre Royal next week. Picture: Robert Day

DAISY Goodwin wrote ITV’s historical drama series Victoria. Now, her debut play, 2025’s By Royal Appointment, is to tour to York Theatre Royal next week in a co-production presented by Daniel Schumann, Lee Dean and The Arts Theatre, Cambridge.

Directed by Anthony Banks and designed by Jonathan Fensom, the play stars Jane Asher as The Queen and Laura Main as The Dresser, replacing the originally announced Samantha Womack.

By Royal Appointment explores their relationship and how the pair created the public image of the world’s longest-reigning monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, who was famous for her discretion, never saying anything in public that could ruffle the lightest of feathers. However, Her Majesty had one way of expressing what she really thought – through her wardrobe. 

Goodwin’s humorous, poignant and celebratory play considers the kind of power that only a Queen can wield, charming the world through coats and admonishing her family through a carefully chosen hat.

Yet Goodwin depicts The Queen as uninterested in fashion, her look being managed by her Designer (played by David Robb), her Milliner (Matthew Cottle’s role) and most powerful of all, her Dresser (Main).

In By Royal Appointment, the Dresser is a working-class girl who goes from advising The Queen on the colour of her lipsticks to the real power behind the throne. However, the Dresser, like all royal favourites, is living on borrowed time.

Taking the regal role in Goodwin’s  behind-the-scenes peek into the world of our most popular monarch and the image she presented to the world is “acting royalty” Jane Asher, the queen of cake bakers to boot.

“I was asked if I would like to do the role,” says Jane, now 80. “I was sent the play – I didn’t know it existed. It’s pretty much new but was first done in a different version last year. I read it and thought it was a somewhat terrifying prospect, but I knew the producer, Lee Dean, who asked me to do it before there was a director attached.

“By chance, a few weeks previously, Anthony had sent me a lovely message via my agent after seeing me in a rehearsed reading at the Orange Tree [Richmond, London]. I knew of him and his work, and when Lee suggested him to me I jumped at it.”

By Royal Appointment is based loosely on the books by The Queen’s senior dresser, Angela Kelly: Dressing The Queen (2012) and The Other Side Of The Coin: The Queen, The Dresser And The Wardrobe, (2019)].

“She more or less became her carer towards the end and had been given permission by The Queen to write the books,” says Jane.

“So the role was irresistible for me: challenging, terrifying but wonderful too. People do really seem to be enjoying it: people of my age group and younger too, really love it, remembering some of The Queen’s clothes that got into your psyche. To see those clothes being brought to life again is remarkable, but of course it’s about much more than that.”

By Royal Appointment is being well received on tour. “I’ve done a great many new plays and I always enjoy it, partly because the writer is usually still alive – and so ‘straight from the horse’s mouth’ is still available,” says Jane.

Jane Asher as The Queen, surrounded by regal clothing in By Royal Appointment. Picture: Robert Day

“You never know how the audience will take it, whether they will laugh or go quiet, but they’re enjoying this play, where with some jokes you get the most from them if you know the history. Overall it’s one of those plays that’s both funny and sad.”

By Royal Appointment is a slice of theatre vérité. “All the characters are taken from reality, so what you have – almost a first – is the chance to go behind the scenes, getting an insight backstage,” says Jane, who drew mostly on the script for her characterisation.

“I didn’t do specific research beyond checking certain dramatic moments in The Queen’s life, such as Lord Mountbatten’s boat being  blown up by IRA bombers, happier times too, and her children’s marriages.

“I’ve gone mainly with Daisy’s view because she’s such a good writer about the Royals. It’s terrifying that so many other actors have played The Queen, and I’ve not ignored them, because they’re deeply ingrained, but I can only do Jane Asher’s version, which will never be The Queen, but audiences will accept this version.”

Did Jane ever encounter The Queen? “Yes, like many actors, I’ve been lucky enough to meet her a few times, like at a do at Buckingham Palace, and when my husband [illustrator and political cartoonist Gerald Scarfe] received the CBE [in October 2008], The Queen did the ceremony and I was there that day.”

Here is a statistic to ponder: “People dream about The Queen more than any other figurehead, which is relatively common,” says Jane. “It may be rather banal to say, but she did reign for an incredibly long time.

“She was so incredibly good at her job, fantastic in that way of being tactful and resolute that no-one should know her political views, and she did such wonderful things in speaking through her ‘clothes’.

“She just loved being in her head scarf and knitted skirt in the Highlands, because I can imagine that if you have to dress up in grand, uncomfortable clothes, you would long to get back into casual wear!”

Central to Jane’s role in By Royal Appointment is the clothing. “I love clothes, so of course it’s a lovely part of the job of acting to wear completely different clothes, but in a play like this, with eight or nine changes, it can get a bit tiring. I’d love to go back to playing a cavewoman!”

Jane wrote about clothing in Jane Asher’s Costume Book: Over 100 Costumes for Children and Adults and How to Make Them. “I thoroughly approve of things like Vinted,” she says. “I’ve always appreciated beautiful clothes that have been kept. I like being dressed in period clothes or ‘vintage’ clothes as they’re now called – but second-hand as I called them.”

Daniel Schumann, Lee Dean and The Arts Theatre, Cambridge, present By Royal Appointment, York Theatre Royal, November 10 to 14, 7.30pm plus 2pm Wednesday & Thursday and 2.30pm Saturday matinees; post-show discussion with cast members after Thursday’s 7.30pm show. Age guidance: 14 plus. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

One last question for Jane Asher, cookery book writer

What do you consider to be the Queen of cakes?

“That’s so tricky: as with most food, so much depends on one’s mood! I don’t have a particularly sweet tooth so although I love making beautiful iced cakes for special occasions, if I was making one for myself to have a slice with a cup of tea I’d choose something like the old-fashioned Madeira – simple but delicious…”

Jane Asher: Actress, businesswoman and author

Jane Asher: back story

Stage credits include: Twelfth Night, The Circle (Orange Tree Theatre); A Song At Twilight, Moon Tiger (Theatre Royal Bath); An American In Paris (Dominion Theatre); Great Expectations (West Yorkshire Playhouse); The Gathered Leaves (Park Theatre); Pride And Prejudice (Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre); Charley’s Aunt (Menier Chocolate Factory); The Importance Of Being Earnest, Farewell To The Theatre, Bedroom Farce (Rose Theatre Kingston), The Reluctant Debutant (Yvonne Arnaud Theatre).

Before The Party (Queen’s Theatre); Blythe Spirit, Henceforward, House/Garden (Vaudeville Theatre); Festen (Almeida Theatre), Look Back In Anger (Royal Court Theatre, Criterion Theatre); Making It Better (Hampstead Theatre, Criterion Theatre); Measure For Measure, Romeo and Juliet, The Happiest Days Of Your Life… (Bristol Old Vic, US tour); Old Flames (Bristol Old Vic).

Peter Pan (Shaftesbury Theatre); Strawberry Fields, The School For Scandal, To Those Born Later (National Theatre); The Philanthropist (Royal Court Theatre, Mayfair Theatre, Broadway); The Shallow End, The Worlds Biggest Diamond, Treats (Royal Court Theatre) and Things We Do For Love (Gielgud Theatre).

Her film credits include: A Family Affair;  Splinter; Burn Burn Burn; I Give It A Year; Alfie; Closing Numbers; Death At A Funeral; Deep End; Dream Child; Henry VIII And His Six Wives; Paris By Night and Runners.

For television: Crossing Lines; Pompidou; Eve, Stella; The Old Guys; Poirot: 3 Act Tragedy; The Palace; A For Andromeda; Crossroads; Miss Marple; The Mistress; Brideshead Revisited and The Mill On The Floss.

Books: Three novels,The Longing, The Question, and Losing It.

Lifestyle, costuming and cake-decorating books: Jane Asher’s Fancy Dress; Jane Asher’s Quicky Party Cakes; Jane Asher’s Tricks Of The Trade; Jane Asher’s Costume Book; Jane Asher’s Children’s Parties; Jane Asher’s Eat For Treats; The Complete Christmas Book; Jane Asher’s Calendar Of Cakes; Jane Asher’s Complete Book Of Cake Decorating Ideas; The Best Of Good Living With Jane Asher; Good Living At Christmas With Jane Asher; Cakes For Fun; Beautiful Baking and Jane Asher’s Easy Celebration Cakes.

Children’s books: Moppy Is Angry; Moppy Is Calm; Moppy Is Happy; Moppy Is Sad and Rhymes For All Seasons.

Businesswoman:Owns a company that makes party cakes and sugar crafts for special occasions.

Did you know? Jane is a shareholder in the satirical magazine Private Eye.

Did you know too? Jane has served as the president of the National Autistic Society since 1997.

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REVIEW: Inspector Morse: House Of Ghosts, Grand Opera House, York ***

Tom Chambers: Putting the morose into Chief Inspector Morse in Inspector Morse: House Of Ghosts. Picture:

THIS is Re-Morse, a new staging of Alma Cullen’s Inspector Morse: House Of Ghosts, the first Morse stage play.

Taken on a small tour in 2010 and broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in a 90-minute version in March 2017, it returns for a nationwide tour on a grander scale, mounted by Melting Pot and Birmingham Rep, with a cast led by 2008 Strictly champ Tom Chambers as Morse and Tachia Newall – Macbeth in Amy Leach’s Macbeth at Leeds Playhouse in 2022 – as Lewis in the detective double act.

Cullen wrote more than a handful of episodes for the television series that ran from 1987 to 2000, based on Colin Dexter’s books. House Of Ghosts is an original story, set as ever in Oxford, in 1987, although Colin Richmond’s functional set design does not evoke the city of dreaming spires, typified by the Crown pub being represented by two men – Morse and Lewis – leaning on a bar in Alas Smith And Jones mode.

Cullen’s play mirrors both the two-hour span of each TV episode and the familiar structure of short scenes, while adding a theatrical element by rooting the play in a production of Hamlet. Or, rather, two productions, one warming up for a London run at the Oxford Playhouse in 1987; the other, a student production in 1962 with the same director in his gilded youth and Morse forever in the background in a bit-part.

Detective double act: Tachia Newall’s Lewis, left, and Tom Chambers’ Morse in Inspector Morse: House Of Ghosts. Picture: Johan Persson

This is the House Of Ghosts, a reference both to figures re-emerging from Morse’s academic past and to the significance of ghosts [Hamlet’s father] in Shakespeare’s tragedy.

Cullen’s play opens with Spin Glancy’s Justin, already highly strung and later prone to putting powders up his nose, putting too much ham into a Hamlet monologue. Enter young actress of her generation Rebecca Downey’s Ophelia (Eliza Teale), who suddenly drops dead, blood spewing from her mouth. This is not Ophelia’s usual death by drowning, but death for real, alas poor Rebecca.

Chambers’ Morse, taking on the John Thaw mantle in the year Thaw first played him, happens to be in the audience, bringing the performance and production run to a halt, much to the ire of Lawrence Baxter (Robert Mountford), the vainglorious, uncompromising director in desperate need of a hit.

Into the web of intrigue Cullen spins not only the reckless, crushing Lawrence from Morse’s student past, but also the now dipso actress Verity (Charlotte Randle) and university historian Ellen (Teresa Banham), one of Morse’s unrequited loves from his salad days.

Re-appearing too is Paul Kincaid (Mountford, part two), once the doyen of Oxford student actors and Baxter’s rival in bed-post conquests, but now answering God’s calling as a Monsignor (who takes Rebecca’s funeral at the outset of the superior Act Two).

Stoking up old history: University historian Ellen (Teresa Banham) and Inspector Morse (Tom Chambers) in Inspector Morse: House Of Ghosts. Picture: Johan Persson

Glancy’s Justin and James Gladdon’s “piece of north eastern rough”, Freddy, the uppity Laertes to his flaky Hamlet, are at odds with each other both on and off stage. Enter the fray Lawrence’s wife Harriet (Olivia Onyehara, from the Stephen Joseph Theatre’s The 39 Steps and Pilot Theatre/Northern Stage’s A Song For Ella Grey), pre-occupied with IVF treatment in London.

The plot thickens, revelations pile up, not least of Baxter’s practice of bedding his leading lady pre-show to bring out the best performance, but House Of Ghosts does not hold a candle to the TV series, and some of the acting under the normally reliable Anthony Banks’s direction is surprisingly histrionic. The sozzled meltdown of Randle’s Verity at the Crown, however, is a comic gem.

Act Two is much more sure-footed, not least in the partnership of Chambers, bringing the morose to loner Morse with a frown worthy of Thaw, and Newall’s matter-of-fact, diligent Sergeant Lewis, craving a night in alone with his wife.

Revisiting an old favourite is not always a good idea, and in truth Inspector Morse: House Of Ghosts induced a feeling or remorse in your reviewer.

Melting Pot and Birmingham Rep present Inspector Morse: House Of Ghosts, Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee. Box office: atgtickets.com/york

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Tom Chambers cracks the Morse code to playing the inspector in House Of Ghosts at Grand Opera House, York, from tomorrow

Tom Chambers’ Detective Chief Inspector Morse in Inspector Morse: House Of Ghosts. Credit: Johan Persson

TOM Chambers returns to the York stage on Tuesday for the first time since appearing in Torben Betts’s ghost story chiller-cum-psychological thriller Murder In The Dark at the Theatre Royal.

In that September 2023 premiere tour he waded through the quagmire of playing washed-up pop star Danny Sierra, a deeply unlovable, self-pitying alcoholic.

Now he plays another chap who likes a drink, the “high-functioning alcoholic” Detective Chief Inspector Morse, an altogether more popular fellow – “the nation’s favourite detective”, as co-producer Simon Friend calls the erudite opera, crossword and real ale enthusiast from Colin Dexter’s novels and 13-year television series, developed by Anthony Minghella and Kenny McBain in 1987, starring John Thaw.

Chambers is appearing in Simon Friend Entertainment and Birmingham Repertory Theatre’s new touring co-production of the first stage play in the Morse franchise, written by Alma Cullen in 2010 after penning episodes as The Secret Of Bay 5B (1989), The Infernal Serpent (1990), Fat Chance (1991) and The Death of The Self (1992) for the ITV series.

Tom Chambers’ washed-up pop star Danny Sierra in Torben Betts’s psychological thriller Murder In The Dark, on tour at York Theatre Royal in September 2023. Picture: Pamela Raith

“I am absolutely thrilled to be bringing to the stage the nationally loved character of Inspector Morse,” says Tom. “Played by John Thaw in the TV series, it is an iconic role which audiences clearly loved alongside the  Morse murder mysteries.

“This brand-new production is a tantalising tale, rich in story and character and even unpicks some of Morse’s closely guarded personal life. It’s going to be a fabulous evening of entertainment.”

In Inspector Morse: House Of Ghosts, a chilling mystery unfolds when a young actress dies suddenly on stage mid-performance. Morse embarks on a gripping investigation, one that begins as a suspicious death inquiry but takes a darker turn when the legendary inspector, in tandem with Detective Sergeant Lewis, uncovers a connection to sinister events in his own past, 25 years earlier.

“We’re at Richmond Theatre this week after opening Birmingham three weeks ago,” says 2008 Strictly Come Dancing winner Tom, who is reuniting with director Anthony Banks after collaborating on the 2020/2021 tour of Dial M For Murder.

Tom Chambers’ Detective Chief Inspector Morse with Teresa Banham’s Ellen in Inspector Morse: House Of Ghosts. Picture: Johan Persson

“It’s a brilliant piece of writing by Alma Cullen, who wrote for the TV series: beautifully written – very slick, very smooth – so it’s like watching Morse on TV with lots of short scenes, but now like Tetris on stage, where we’ve worked on the stage movement like in a ballet.

“The show has been working really well. I’m just amazed how much the audiences love Morse, and the relationship between Morse and Lewis [played by Waterloo Road alumnus Tachia Newall] is so well expressed too.”

Audiences have warmed to Tom’s portrayal of Morse. “Being the youngest of five, I’m a natural pleaser,” he says. “But I definitely feel that it’s also about what John Thaw brought to the role. Somebody pointed out I’m playing Morse at exactly the same John Thaw started playing him. [It turns out this is not correct, Chambers is 48, Thaw was 44]. John stayed looking that way for decades!

“John brought his natural brilliance to it, and I feel it’s written in a way that you can imagine his Morse saying it, so you don’t want to swim against the tide. It feels nourishing, comforting, like soul food, where you know Morse and what it will be like and it feels a pleasure to be there. It’s like a two-way relationship [with the audience]. We give a sense of John Thaw without being a copy.”

Partners in tackling crime: Tom Chambers’s Detective Chief Inspector Morse, right, with Tachia Newall’s Detective Sergeant Lewis in Inspector Morse: House Of Ghosts. Credit: Johan Persson

House Of Ghosts has the structure of a story within a story, where Morse is transported back to 25 years earlier, surrounded by actors from a production of Hamlet in university days. “It’s satisfyingly intricate,” says Tom. “One of the delights is that information unravels in such a clever way that audiences feel complete when it’s finished, and the music fits in beautifully too.

“It’s one of the favourite pieces that I’ve done because I’ve really enjoyed trying to be the opposite of performing. Watching John Thaw, who was so ‘unpolicemanlike’, it’s made me realise that the craft of acting is to be as relaxed as possible but with intention – you can still feel your heart beat, and your jugular on your neck, especially on first nights. I just love the dialogue too, and Morse’s attitude; how he’s analogue, not digital. Just charming.”

Tom, by the way, has many fond memories of York. “My aunty, Shirley O’Brien, is from York. We’d always end up in the Minster,” he says.

Simon Friend Entertainment and Birmingham Repertory Theatre present Inspector Morse: House Of Ghosts, Grand Opera House, York, September 23 to 27, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Wednesday and Saturday matinees. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.

The poster for Anthony Banks’s touring production of Inspector Morse: House Of Ghosts, playing Grand Opera House, York, from tomorrow

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