Wallis…a certain person (Cast: 4 male/4 female)

****

Jennifer Selway’s fictionalised account of the troubled relationship between Wallis Simpson and the Prince of Wales counterpoints it against the friendship between a gay valet and a perky maid who often function as commentators.

Robert Hazle is outstanding as the valet, camply self deprecating and insightfully intelligent about everything the upper classes are doing. He is also one of the finest actor musos I have ever seen, performing Simon Slater’s rippling, rapier-sharp songs with incisive warmth from behind a piano on an upstage mini platform.

Since this is a play with music rather than musical theatre, these tacked on numbers are the totality of the music in what is otherwise a straight play. Good as they are, they feel like a welcome bonus rather than an integral part of the action. Katie Arnstein gives a fine performance as Pearl, the maid who becomes a – sort of – partner to Hazle’s character. They work well together and create a real sense of affection.

Emma Odell, dark and slender, finds plenty of depth in Wallis’ character. Yes, she’s manipulative, imperious, demanding, needy, simpering, seductive and as capricious as Cleopatra. On the other hand, she’s no mere gold-digger and we feel at the end that she is trapped where she doesn’t really want to be.

Grant McConvey as David – the Prince of Wales – looks oddly like Prince William and has enough royal bearing to be convincing. In Act II he throws himself at her feet like a dog, shouts at Baldwin (Bernard O’Sullivan – good) and, somehow, eventually retrieves a little dignity.

The supporting cast is strong with lovely cameo work from Eliza McClelland first as the drunken, drug-crazed Lady Cunard, and then as the feisty, sensible Mrs Baldwin. Alice Pitt-Carter delights as Thelma Furness, whether she’s flirting, gossiping or miffed.

Full marks too to Emily Bestow for her neat set. The playing space at Upstairs at the Gatehouse is quite spaciously transverse with the audience to one side. She uses every inch of it and includes a hinged table, a sofa which is slid in and out of a cupboard, and a flat which pivots to offer two different scenes. The rest of the stage is furnished with, for example, bookcases and desks, so that we move quickly from the Simpsons’ house to 10 Downing Street and the home of the valet and maid.

It’s an enjoyable, thoughtful, wittily scripted piece of theatre, devised and directed by John Plews. Catch it if you can.

****

Jenny Selway’s new play tells one of the best-known stories from one of the least explored perspectives. Where you might expect it to be populated with Whitehall mandarins muttering their disapproval in corridors of power, we have instead American heiresses and a couple of gossipy British servants providing catty commentary on our promiscuous, decadent often Nazi-loving upper classes.

The title, of course, refers to the American social climber whose charms caused a constitutional crisis in 1936 when King Edward VIII (Grant McConvey) gave up the monarchy to be with her.

If there’s a moral to this show, it’s be careful what you wish for. As the married Wallis, an excellent Emma Odell transmits the steely determination with which the socialite betrayed her husband and inveigled her way into the royal court – only to be marooned in a relationship, it’s suggested, after the former King was cut loose by the British establishment. But the focus here is on her rise, a trajectory accompanied with songs (lyrics also by Selway) sung with Cowardesque piquancy by Robert Hazle.

John Plews’s production goes on for about two (repetitive) scenes too many. And given the title I wanted to know more about the relatively modest beginnings that drove Wallis’s ambition, and more on life after abdication, only not without one of those tedious flashback plays, please.

But as it stands this is still one of the most engaging and best acted shows I’ve seen on this stage, and a better option than many a West End offering.

***
Wallis Simpson humanised in diverting rendering of the Abdication crisis

The 1997 Edward-and-Mrs-Simpson West End flop Always was a gushing affair that depicted the couple as the most heroic of lovers. Fortunately Wallis: A Certain Person, Jennifer Selway’s long-winded and gossipy but ultimately emotionally nuanced play with music, takes a less rose-tinted look at this notorious liaison.

Making Wallis Simpson sympathetic is not an easy task. Selway rightly doesn’t try to rehabilitate Wallis as a misunderstood romantic heroine and doesn’t sentimentalise the way in which the great passion was very much on Edward’s side and more smothering than romantic.

As Wallis, Emma Odell is all angular aloofness and drawling nonchalance, unashamedly flouting the rules of mistress-hood by behaving like a disagreeable wife. Grant McConvey perceptively portrays the Prince of Wales as an emotionally stunted man-child wholly unsuited to power, even of a ceremonial kind.

John Plews’ production evokes a world of cocktail parties and naughty weekends in the country. The revolving set contributes a real sense of luxury but the moving around of the furniture between the many changes of setting undercuts much of the tension, a particular snag when the story is so well known.

The musical element is provided by the framing device of a gay valet (played with warmth by Robert Hazle) and his parlourmaid wife. These interludes help to cover up the scene changes but more entertainingly send up the bizarre institution that is the monarchy: something that it is possible to disapprove of but still be fascinated by.

Wallis is, of course, Wallis Simpson, mistress then wife of Edward, Prince of Wales. Devised by its director John Plews and written by Jennifer Selway, this is a fictional presentation of their developing relationship from 1931 to their marriage. It paints a real seeming picture of an unbalanced relationship shown in the context of their intimate social circle.

It begins with Wallis and her husband Ernest Simpson being invited to dinner by fellow American the Viscountess Furness, the Prince of Wales’s current mistress. They are there to add formal respectability to the lovers’ liaison. Before we meet these posh people, the Prince’s valet fills in the back-story, explaining things to a new maid as they lay the table.

In a structure as artificial as this society’s mores, this couple act as a kind of a chorus. Camp valet Raymond provides a Cowardesque musical commentary to cover scene changes. Played by Robert Hazle and Katie Arnstein, they are much more likeable than their so-called betters.

Thelma Furness doesn’t expect marriage from David (as intimates know Prince Edward). She says it’s more fun being a mistress than a wife-in-waiting, but, when she goes abroad and asks Mrs Simpson to look after David in her absence, she doesn’t expect Wallis to become her replacement. David, however, becomes besotted with Wallis who loves the attention, the jewellery gifts and the social prominence it gives her, though, as Thelma points out, “you don’t even love him. I do!”

Alice Pitt-Carter gives Thelma Furness genuine feeling and Emma Odell and Tom Slatter as Wallis and Ernest Simpson suggest that they get on together: a caring and compliant husband to match a demanding wife—he even blows her nose for her while her nail varnish is drying.

Jennifer Selway doesn’t give us royal romance so much as Wallis Simpson, social climber. She may gain a smidgen of sympathy as she is caught up in much more than perhaps she intended, but it is her ruthless ambition for a place in society that dominates this characterisation. It provokes growing resentment among the circles in which she wants to move.

Grant McConvey presents an immature, none-too-bright David. We are told he can put on a good show for public appearances if briefed for them but seems mainly out for a good time. He seems to have ladies lining up for a royal liaison and a particular penchant for American women. But what makes the Prince fall in love with Mrs Simpson? Could it really be some exotic sexual technique she picked up in Shanghai that enthralls him? That is what society gossip says.

Gossip is what drives this play, fashionable Lady Emerald Cunard (Eliza McClelland) at the heart of it and even the Prince of Wales’s equerry Edward “Fruity” Metcalf (an urbane Lee Ormsby) joining in, though doing his job loyally.

The intervention of PM Stanley Baldwin (Bernard O’Sullivan) seen with his wife Lucy (a neat double from Eliza McClelland) add a more documentary touch but still in the spirit of satirical comedy.

There is an elegant set by Emily Bestow but the time taken to accomplish its multiple changes slows down the action, despite the distraction of Simon Slater’s musical numbers. The lively tunes and tongue-in-cheek levity of Selway’s lyrics makes one wish there were more of them and integrated into the action.

Despite the importance of these events in British constitutional history and the shadow of fascist connection hovering over them, the plotting is lightweight and, though John Plews’s direction brings out the humour and lively performances, this could be pushed a little further into being an all-out musical.

He got what he wanted, she got trapped. Well worth catching.

Plays and films about Edward V111 and Wallis Simpson abound, mostly pretty terrible. Whether one needs another attempt at telling their story is anybody’s guess, but this reworking of a tale often presented as the greatest love story ever told – he gave up his throne for the woman he loved – is very well worth catching.

This Wallis as an adventuress, a brash, clever, witty once divorced married woman from Baltimore who became the mistress of David, the Prince of Wales, and lived to regret it for the rest of her life. She was doing what she had always done when she arrived in London with businessman husband Ernest Simpson – collecting jewels, making society friends, indulging in the high life and playing the field with his consent. She ended up like a fly trapped in amber.

David was a spoilt, sexually inadequate child man who always got what he wanted – the complaisant society wives who serviced him for a start – someone to whom nobody, in spite of a pretty dreadful relationship with his father, had ever said no.

It is not a great love story, but a story of obsession, of a woman doomed to endure a marriage she did not want and a totally pointless life for decades to come.

Jennifer Selway and Ricky Plews have devised a smart, brittle and entertaining play framed with a collection of songs by Simon Slater in the manner of Noel Coward sung with brio by Robert Hazle.

Things are helped by fine performances from Emma Odell, lanky and suitably striking, as Wallis, and Grant McConvey, baby faced and oozing petulance, as David. Alice Pitt-Carter has some choice moments as the ousted mistress, Thelma Furness, and Lee Ormsby is suitably nasty as the courtier and fixer pal, Fruity Metcalf, who bought off the embarrassments on behalf of his boss.

It is a tale about different times, different attitudes. The British public was kept in the dark about the affair, divorced women were social outcasts, and the politicians and churchmen behaved almost as badly as the Windsors. The result is salutary to say the least and quite unlike the home life of our current dear Prince of Wales. Designer Emily Bestow has created a terrific set which changes before one’s eyes as the action moves fron the Simpson’s flat to the Ritz, to the Furness home, and to Fort Belvedere in Windsor Great Park.

****
Fresh light on woman who won a king’s heart

Everyone knows about the American divorcee that cost Edward VIII his throne.

Now, Jennifer Selway has researched the matter thoroughly and discovered more information about Wallis Simpson and her background.

It was difficult to understand why the Prince – the good-looking playboy – should have fallen so deeply in love with ‘That Woman’. She was not beautiful, aristocratic or rich.

She wasn’t even very nice, but she had something that kept the Prince close to her, that even drove him to give up the throne for her.

She was good company, a witty and lively conversationalist, so why couldn’t they have just remained friends? Was it an excuse for him to evade his heavy responsibility?

It certainly wasn’t her idea. She was ambitious and would have been delighted to be Queen, but it seems she was reluctant to marry him when she knew he would have to abdicate.

Selway‘s play deals with their meeting, their romance and ends with their marriage.

We are kept up-to-date with the story by another couple – the butler (Robert Hazle) and housemaid (Katie Arnstein) – who have their own romance and are privy to the superior couple’s perverted sexual tastes.

The butler also plays the piano from time to time and gives us witty commentaries – à la Noel Coward – to music by Simon Slater.

Emma Odell gives a completely convincing performance as Wallis and the prince is played by Windsor look-alike, Grant McConvey.

There is a great deal of very funny bitchiness from the rest of the cast.

They joke that from the size of Wallis’s hands and feet, she must have been a man. Luckily, the press didn’t pounce on that information until the Prince announced his abdication on the BBC.

A very entertaining evening with many revelations, and originally devised by John Plews who directs the production. Well worth the trip to Highgate.