Dragon Review: Playhouse Creatures – Yvonne Arnaud Theatre

Published on: 26 Apr, 2025
Updated on: 29 Apr, 2025

Telling it straight: Mrs Betterton (Anna Chancellor) tells Nell Gwyn (Zoe Brough) harsh truths about life as a young actress. Ellie Kurttz

By Alice Fowler

‘Playhouse Creatures’, on tour from the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond and showing at the Yvonne Arnaud all this week, celebrates the pioneering actresses of the 17th century.

We’re back in the early 1660s and Charles II, restored to the throne, has reopened the nation’s playhouses after 18 years in darkness. For the first time in English history, that means jobs for the girls.

Commanding but vulnerable: Anna Chancellor as Mrs Betterton. Ellie Kurttz

A cast of five – including Anna Chancellor, excellent as mother of the company Mrs Betterton – has great fun with April de Angelis’s script, swinging from bawdy comedy to emotional intensity.

While all five are inspired by real-life actresses of the time, the only name most of us will recognise is that of Nell Gwyn. As the play progresses Gwyn (a sparkling Zoe Brough) embarks on her stellar rise from fast-talking oyster seller, to ingenue actress, to mistress of the King.

Meanwhile the fortunes of another young actress, Mrs Farley (Nicole Sawyerr), go the other way when, after a brief dalliance with the King, she suffers the – for a female actress of the 17^th century – disastrous fate of falling pregnant.

Completing the company are Mrs Marshall (Katherine Kingsley), a spirited actress railing against her treatment by a faithless aristocrat, the Earl of Oxford; and Doll Common, played on the night I watched by understudy Tracy Collier, who offers astute advice from the sidelines, mends costumes and steps in to play a corpse when needed.

A moment of high drama for the company, off-stage. Ellie Kurttz

Director Michael Oakley, and set and costume designer Fotini Dimou, bring the febrile intimacy of 17th century theatre to the Yvonne Arnaud stage. As a 21st century audience we too can savour the riper acting styles of yesteryear (including a swordfight between two breeches-clad actresses – a daring sight in an era of long skirts, when the sight of a woman’s legs was erotically charged).

Chancellor is outstanding as Mrs Betterton, wife of the leader of the company. As the play progresses, ‘Mrs B’ sees the handful of main roles available to her – Lady Macbeth, Cleopatra – slip from her grasp. In another nod to the plight of modern actresses, she has become too old, and must content herself with minor parts.

Mrs Marshall (Katherine Kingsley) plots revenge on the aristocrat who spurned her. Ellie Kurttz

It is striking (if not surprising) how many issues raised in de Angelis’s 1993 script still resonate: sexism, harassment, aging and, of course, the difficulty (common to almost all creatives) of trying to scrape a living.

For Nell Gwyn (Zoe Brough), a glittering future – and a place in history – awaits. Ellie Kurttz

The actresses of ‘Playhouse Creatures’ demand a share of the theatre’s profits and, by the play’s end, seem to have secured this demand. As one of the company remarks: “Once you’ve seen a real boob, a stuffed sock doesn’t hack it”. We can all be grateful that, once these spirited early actresses hit the stage, there really was no going back.

‘Playhouse Creatures’ continues at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre until Saturday 26^th April. For information and to book, see https://www.yvonne-arnaud.co.uk