By Royal Appointment
- Jenny Daniel
- Aug 7
- 3 min read
Daisy Goodwin
Daniel Schumann and Lee Dean
Lowry, Salford
August 6-9, 2025; 2hrs 20 mins
It’s a strange sort of imagining, the dialogue that might occur in the Queen’s bedchamber. On the one hand we have a well-documented portrait of Her late Majesty’s 70-year reign and her life before that, as a young girl, a princess, and, from the age of nine, the unexpected heir to the throne.
On the other hand, we actually have very little idea of the nature and content of her private interactions with those closest to her, both in physical space and emotionally. But of course the many stage and screen ideas about the Queen’s private life are also in our collective national and cultural consciousness. To leave us in no doubt of these, many are catalogued in detail by John Good in the show programme under the title, The Queen as Muse.
By Royal Appointment is another work of fiction, with a seed (maybe even a sapling) of reality at its root. The dialogue is sometimes sharp and clever and observational, though the dramaturgy is occasionally strange or stilted. As a writer of much longer forms, this is Daisy Goodwin’s first stage play, and it is a largely concise and valiant effort.
The performances sparkle, with Anne Reid as the Queen and the other two bickering queens - the Designer and the Milliner - played by James Wilby and tonight by understudy Jeremy Drake rather than regular incumbent, James Dreyfus. Caroline Quentin plays the central character, Gigi the Queen's dresser. But we shouldn't neglect to mention the actual designer for the show, Jonathan Fensom, whose uncanny costume recreations fabricate the central line through the story.
The life and times of the Queen are played in a number of short scenes, starting in 1969, with Elizabeth already well established in her role, and in middle-age. For those who may have watched The Crown on TV, this show is somehow more poignant from the start.
From the vantage point of 2025Â we know the (recent) end of the modern Elizabethan age is in plain sight. And so we are taken by a curator (Grainne Dromgoole) through a series of vignettes, framed by a dozen outfits (each with matching hat) exploring character and context.
The joy of the show is really the reactions to the issues of every age, from the perspective of the aristocracy and the working class, and the congruence in the way each of the characters is born to serve. The contrasts of manner and class create comedy, but become far less important than the commitment of each of the four main characters. Whether from Windsor or Wigan, there is a shared understanding of importance between all four characters and sense of greater purpose.
There are dramaturgical issues, including the strange "forgetings" of characters, particularly the Designer and the Milliner, of where they are and whose company they might be in, when secrets might be told, emotions expunged and complexities revealed. We never really know if we are in Buckingham or Balmoral, and some entrances and exits ring far from true.
Not unlike Jane Austin, Goodwin writes far more fluently and intuitively for women in conversation than for men. The servant characters, the Designer, the Milliner and the Dresser are amalgamations of real life people, and the quietly radical intention is there - as Goodwin tells us in the programme - to point out that through the designs and their creators, "so often the Queen was presented to the world through a queer lens. Indeed there is a truth and a voice that comes though the Queen’s style, perhaps revealing her humanity and the care of those around her – and for those who so wish, one that makes us feel still connected to her, in her absence. As iconic but ambiguous visual storytellers go, Queen Elizabeth II, her designers and her dressers created moments in the public consciousness that we will not see again.
This production celebrates that skill, and that unusual mode of subtle communication, and highlights a window on the unspoken feelings of a monarch and a woman who was duty-bound never to express them in words.
More info and tickets here
