Review Roundup: BACKSTAIRS BILLY, Starring Penelope Wilton and Luke Evans

Michael Grandage Company just celebrated opening night of Marcelo Dos Santos’ new comedy Backstairs Billy which looks at a pivotal moment in the 50 year relationship between the Queen Mother and her loyal servant William “Billy” Tallon. Michael Grandage directs Penelope Wilton as the Queen Mother and Luke Evans as Billy.

Set in 1979, when strikes are bringing the country to its knees and Britain is about to seismically change under Margaret Thatcher, it is business as usual for the Queen Mother and Billy inside Clarence House. Receptions are in full swing and the champagne is flowing as the two worlds start to collide with dizzying consequences.

Let's see what the critics had to say!

Laura Jones, BroadwayWorld: Michael Grandage’s production allows Wilton to showcase her impeccable comedic style and she delivers her lines with precision and wit. Each joke lands with the audience and she brilliantly humanises the Queen Mother. Wilton and Evans are a delightful duo, bouncing off each other effortlessly.

Dominic Cavendish, Telegraph: Their camaraderie may not have oiled the most crucial wheels of monarchy – as we cut between 1979 and 1952, when Tallon first arrived in the household as a callow youth, it’s made clear that the former Queen Consort is in constant danger of feeling like a spare part. But the energy lavished on enlivening the royal carry-on, against a backdrop of fiscal constraint and revolutionary winds of change, indicates the challenge of perpetuating the institution tout court.

Alice Saville, Independent: It’s Dos Santos’s first West End play, but it doesn’t feel like it. Producer and director Michael Grandage has alighted upon a polished, one-liner-filled script and given it a lavish, pacy production that’s full of moments of delight, from set designer Christopher Oram’s extravagantly pink decor to the real live corgis that scuttle across the stage. The royal family never looked so camp, and that’s before Billy (Luke Evans) delivers his briefing to his newest junior footman: “There are two queens in this castle, and I suggest you pay attention to both equally,” he says, proudly introducing green young Gwydion (Iwan Davies) to the bed-hopping ways of backstairs life.

Matt Wolf, The Arts Desk: The performances could not be better. I last saw Evans on this same stage in Rent Remixed, but nothing in my experience of him so far suggested the layers of feeling that he brings to this sleekly coiffed purveyor of bravado whose ego gets rather dramatically punctured. Time away from theatre may have made Evans a film name, but seems also to have amplified his connection to the stage. Wilton returns often to the theatre and deserves credit for a portrait that is light on its feet, not least in the various scenes in which the Queen Mother and Billy come together to dance. (Note a fascinating programme interview between the costume designers about capturing the necessary sartorial look.) Entirely aware of 'people like you' (that's to say, gay), the Queen Mother is all tolerance, but only up to a point. And those who might dismiss Backstairs Billy as so much heightened gossip would do well to heed its warning about societal divides that on this evidence can never be breached.

Tom Wicker, TimeOut: There's something gleefully subversive about Dos Santos’s script and Grandage’s bouncy production, which makes it compelling. It’s harder-edged than the simple, ‘joyful comedy’ about an odd-couple friendship that it’s promoted as in the accompanying blurb. Sure, at one level, it does what you might expect from the glut of royal rehabilitation stories we’ve seen on TV and film. It has some great one-liners, gives us a roll call of colourfully eccentric or over-privileged people to laugh at… and there are actual corgis.

Lyn Gardner, Stagedoor: Wilton is absolutely sublime, hinting at both self-absorption and a self-limiting nostalgia, but also a woman who is far smarter than those around her might ever guess. But clearly, the audience sees the real stars of this show as Pumpkin and Tring, the two scene-stealing corgis, not just delightful bundles of fluff but surely the first time in British theatre that a corgi has been used as a plot device.

Sam Marlowe, The Stage: Grandage’s production has its pleasures. Wilton brilliantly humanises the Queen Mother: tough, beady and remorselessly self-centred beneath her soft, powdery exterior, stewing in genteel displeasure that she’s been sidelined since her husband’s death, and staving off loneliness with gin and pointless chit-chat. Evans is a myopically snobbish, flamboyantly entertaining Billy, with his wicked, gimlet-eyed twinkle and swan-like, gliding efficiency. It is difficult to imagine how it could all be done better. But I’m also not entirely sure why you’d bother.

Average Rating: 81.4%

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