Playwright: Jessica Swale; music by Nigel Hess
At: Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Navy Pier, 800 E. Grand Ave. Tickets: 312-595-5600; ChicagoShakes.com; $48-$88. Runs through: Nov. 4
"Who would go to the theater to see real people saying real things about the real world? It's preposterous!" So proclaims an actor in the King's Company in Nell Gwynn, Jessica Swale's sparkling—if occasionally formulaic—comedy of Restoration manners, now at Chicago Shakespeare under the direction of Christopher Luscombe. In our current grim times, some merry bawdiness with a scosh of contemporary feminist insight is quite welcome.
Swale's play, featuring sprightly musical interludes by Nigel Hess, is more anachronistic historical fantasia than docu-drama. But Scarlett Strallen as Nell—one of the first actresses to find fame on the English stage and mistress to King Charles II—brings vivacity, wit and charm galore to the role. The play traces Nell's saga from a saucy orange-seller at the theater to her early forays onto the stage to her "it's complicated" romance with Timothy Edward Kane's monarch.
Nell is the daughter of a drunken brothel-keeper who spent some time as a prostitute herself before being discovered by actor Charles Hart ( John Tufts ). He tries to school her in acting—which at the time meant knowing a bajillion gestures supposedly indicative of emotional states—acting as semaphore. This doesn't sit well with Edward Kynaston ( waspish David Bedella ), who previously played the female leads and challenges Nell to depict the "21 varieties of grief as expressed by the left eyebrow." ( Changing modes of acting, from stylized to naturalistic, also featured in Lolita Chakrabarti's Red Velvet at Chicago Shakes in 2017. )
But even becoming the favorite mistress of theater-loving Charles doesn't protect Nell from court intrigue. Charles' advisor, Lord Arlington ( played by Larry Yando, the obvious go-to for oily-but-deadly villains ) shows just how far he's willing to go to remove Nell from court. This plot thread, which dovetails with Nell's abandonment of her sister, Rose ( Emma Ladji ), and her drunken mother, Old Ma Gwynn ( Hollis Resnik ), takes us briefly into awkward melodrama.
The show works best when the machinations of the theater and those of the court are juxtaposed. In Kane's portrayal, fence-sitting Charles is playing at king more than being king ( and given that he witnessed his own father's execution in the English Civil War, who can blame him? ) A few sly digs at our current administration won loud applause opening night.
The scenes with the King's Company get the biggest laughs, as they try to make silk purses out of the sow's ear of John Dryden's work. ( Christopher Sheard plays the besieged playwright as an endearing naif. ) Natalie West as Nancy, Nell's addled dresser, is her own master class in comic acting—like a Restoration version of Thelma Ritter's Birdie in All About Eve.
But ultimately, it's Strallen in the title role who wins us over with Nell's blend of self-assurance and vulnerability, embodying the irresistible charms of the woman Samuel Pepys called "pretty, witty Nell."
