By Royal Appointment
Royal Add Dress
By Royal Appointment
by Daisy Goodwin
Theatre Royal Bath Productions at Richmond Theatre until 26th July, then on tour until 9th August
Review by Eleanor Marsh
Daisy Goodwin’s debut play is a highly fictionalised account of the relationship between the late Queen Elizabeth II and her dresser, along with the designer and milliner who were allegedly responsible for all her outfits for the last twenty years of her life.
The premise is a very clever set of vignettes each focussing on one iconic outfit and the story behind it.
This provides an excellent potted history of the UK, with each scene being introduced by the Curator of a new exhibition of the Queen’s outfits providing an informative and amusing list of major events that occurred at the time each dress was worn. The role of the Curator exists purely to impart this information. Grainne Dromgoole does a sterling job to make something of this thankless role. Her initial entrance promises some entertaining conflict with Caroline Quentin’s Dresser but this promise is never fulfilled; after a brief conversation just to tell the audience why she’s there she never interacts with anyone else on stage again, but she has a lovely rapport with the audience. Despite director Dominic Dromgoole’s best attempt to make the role interesting by using movement and pointing the humour, one couldn’t help thinking of how Alexa or Siri might have fared.
The suspension of disbelief in the play starts early – the Queen died in 2022, the investiture of the Prince of Wales was in 1969. That’s a lot longer than twenty years but the same gang of three are there dressing the Queen from the off. A similar lack of attention to detail runs through with the Queen’s actual costumes. The queen’s main costume was exactly right – ageless, timeless and classy. However, she’s given some coats to wear toward the end of the play. Every single one was a good four inches shorter than the dress, which made them all look like the housecoats of the 1960s housewife. I’m sure HMQ would not have been amused.
Anne Reid as the Queen is pitch-perfect all through the play. This is no Dead Ringers impression of our late sovereign, there is little to no attempt to “do the voice”. It is acting in the best sense of embodying a role and is an excellent performance. Ms Reid has excellent comic timing and delivery, and got some truly big laughs. Sadly some of these were for cheap and unnecessary jokes. “Heir and spare”, for example is a phrase used by the aristocracy for centuries. It has only recently been weaponised by the Duke of Sussex and its use in this play was distracting and felt a little tasteless.
The Dresser (loosely based on Angela Kelly) is nicely played by Caroline Quentin who has excellent chemistry with Anne Reid. The feeling of a long term mutually supportive relationship is palpable and in Quentin’s character the writing excels in providing an insight into Court life. Where did she get the time to be married? Where did she live? How long was her commute to the Palace? What happened if she wanted a holiday or got sick? All unanswered questions nicely posed in the subtext of the play.
The Designer and Milliner are played by James Wilby and James Dreyfuss respectively. Both performances are a joy to watch; both wring as much as they can out of the humour without descending into caricature, and are equally effective in more emotional moments. They are also used as ways of shoe-horning major events into the conversation and the jury is out on whether this works. The big problem with these two though is that they are fictional characters invented by Goodwin to progress the plot. There is nothing wrong with that in principle, but in a play that is about real events and real people this jars. It is true that Angela Kelly was responsible for several of the Queen’s iconic outfits, including the infamous “Brexit hat”. It is also true that she wore in the Queen’s shoes. But what of everyone else? I looked in the programme in vain for an acknowledgement to the actual designers and milliners who provided some of the most photographed costumes in history.
So hats off to just some of the real people involved in HMQ’s look:
The Milliners – Frederick Fox, Rachel Trevor-Morgan, and Simone Mirman
The Designers – Hardy Amies, Norman Hartnell, and Ian Thomas
Overall this is a very interesting and entertaining play. The performances are uniformly excellent and the design (apart from those coats) superb. Special mention to Nina Dunn’s superb projections, and Dominic Dromgoole’s choice of music soundscape – all brilliantly evocative of time and place. Daisy Goodwin’s writing is a bitter-sweet nostalgic journey that wraps us in a warm blanket of times past. Oh for an acknowledgement of the men and women who helped made those special events so memorable.
Eleanor Marsh, July 2025
Photography by Nobby Clark
Mark Aspen 