Check out the first rehearsal pictures of James in By Royal Appointment which will be on tour around the UK as of 5th June 2025. Click here to see the rest.
Photos credit: Jonathan Phang / Website source: Westend Theatre
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We can bring you the most fantastic news that James will start alongside Caroline Quentin in ‘By Royal Appointment’ in a play that will run on a UK tour throughout the summer.
The late Queen Elizabeth II was famous for her discretion. She never said anything in public that could ruffle the lightest of feathers. But she had one way of expressing what she really thought – through her wardrobe.
By Royal Appointment is a funny, poignant and celebratory new play about the kind of power that only a Queen can wield – she charms the world through coats and admonishes her family through a carefully chosen hat. But the Queen herself is uninterested in fashion, her look is managed by her Designer, her Milliner and most powerful of all, her Dresser who was a working-class girl who goes from advising the Queen on the colour of her lipsticks to the real power behind the throne. But the Dresser, like all royal favourites is living on borrowed time.
By Royal Appointment is a behind the scenes peek into the world of our most popular monarc and the image she presented to the world. Starring national treasure Anne Reid as The Queen, doyen of stage and screen Caroline Quentin as The Dresser, with Olivier award-winning James Dreyfus as The Milliner and Merchant Ivory and Poldark legend James Wilby as The Designer. The new play is written by Daisy Goodwin who created the hit ITV series Victoria and directed by former Artistic Director of Shakespeare’s Globe, Dominic Dromgoole.
James will play The Designer.
Bath Theatre Royal
5 June 2025 – 14 June 2025
Cheltenham Everyman Theatre
17 June 2025 – 21 June 2025
Leeds Grand Theatre
24 June 2025 – 28 June 2025
Malvern Festival Theatres
Southampton Mayflower Theatre
London Richmond Theatre
Guildford Yvonne Arnaud Theatre
Salford The Lowry
6 August 2025 – 9 August 2025
Posted by admin on Apr 10, 2015
North London’s Park Theatre is doing cracking business with a play about Margaret Thatcher’s downfall a quarter of a century ago.
It examines the role not only of Sir Geoffrey Howe — the one-time ‘dead sheep’ who savaged Mrs T with his Commons resignation speech — but also his Left-leaning wife, Elspeth.
Lady Howe has long been a bogeywoman for Thatcherites; some reckon she wrote plodder Geoffrey’s speech. Playwright Jonathan Maitland, a political journalist, accepts that she stiffened her husband’s resolve but he has high regard for her.
She and Geoffrey (played by James Wilby) are the play’s heroes, standing up to the hectoring of Steve Nallon’s big-shouldered, caricatured Mrs T.
Six actors are used, the Park’s upstairs seats lending the stage the air of the Commons Chamber with its galleries. Some audience members sit on stage in seats that become Commons benches.
This may evoke memories of a recent Royal National Theatre show about the Wilson/Heath years, The House. We have also had plays about the Queen and her PMs — politics is suddenly big box office.
The play opens with Mr Wilby’s Howe alone on stage. Enter Mr Nallon, who did Maggie’s voice for Spitting Image and is done up here like her puppet in that show.
The opening words are ‘no, no, no’ in a Thatcherish baritone. Warm laughter from the audience.
Mr Wilby wears Sir Geoffrey’s glasses, but there is no attempt to catch his ponderous timbre. Likewise, elegant actress Jill Baker is little like the real Elspeth. Where is the ageing-pixie haircut and butch briskness? Mother Thatcher was a gift for cartoonists but so was liberal snoot Lady Howe. Ian Talbot’s production could have had more fun with this grand old trout.
The tale flicks between Howe’s Cabinet departure and the early years of the Thatcher Government when he was a radical Chancellor. A brief scene shows the early Howe saving an uncertain Thatcher in a meeting.
Source: Daily Mail
