Here’s a treat for fans of The Crown and Downton Abbey and the not inconsiderable intersection of these two contingents: a new play about the Queen Mother starring Penelope Wilton, who was Downton’s steadfast Isobel Crawley. It is also a gift for all who admire superlative acting, as Wilton, a dame far less in the spotlight than her colleagues Dame Judi and Dame Maggie, gives a customarily magnificent performance in which humour and pathos are woven sinuously together.
Two corgis dash across the stage at the start of Michael Grandage’s sure-footed production of this gently old-fashioned drama and we settle back happily, understanding the milieu instantly.
![BACKSTAIRS BILLY by Santos, , writer - Marcelo Dos Santos, Michael Grandage - Director, Christopher Oram - Set Designer, Christopher Oram and Tom Rand - Costume Designers, Ryan Day - Lighting Designer, Adam Cork - Music and Sound Designer, Carole Hancock - Wigs, Hair & Make-Up Designer, Jacob Sparrow - Casting Director, Sophie Drake - Associate Director, Mary Charlton - Costume Supervisor, Duke of Yorks Theatre, 2023, Credit: Johan Persson/ Provided by kate@katemorleypr.com](https://wp.inews.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/SEI_179205461.jpg?w=760)
The setting is the garden room at the Queen Mother’s residence, Clarence House, and William “Billy” Tallon (Luke Evans), Page of the Backstairs by official title but essentially the most loyal and trusted servant who oversaw all aspects of the Queen Mother’s life, is ensuring everything is in order. He is camp and chirpy in Evans’s bouncy performance, which relishes the sharp wit of Marcelo Dos Santos’s script. Eventually his royal mistress arrives and it is evident that Billy and HM are quite the double act.
The year is 1979 and outside the pink damask silk curtains of Clarence House times and politics are a-changing rapidly in a country beset by strikes and race riots. Yet Billy’s proud boast is “I have stopped time for her”, and inside the champagne continues to flow liberally, despite pressure on the Queen Mother to rein in her spending.
Guests come and go; Wilton is twinkly joviality wrapped in a light shroud of melancholy. A flashback to 1952 shows the Queen Mother cast out of the “big house” after the death of her husband King George VI, a widow at 51 whose role and status are suddenly uncertain. Poignant echoes of this stately loneliness continue in 1979, as the busy Royal Family is nowhere to be seen and Princess Margaret cancels yet another breakfast meeting with her mother. Wilton’s ability to smile warmly with a look of such hurt in her eyes is unparalleled.
Yet there is always Billy, fiercely protective of the Queen Mother and all she stands for, on hand to cheer her up. Billy, a gallivanting gay adventurer, brings hook-up Ian (Eloka Ivo) back to Clarence House late one night, the ramifications of which move swiftly from humorous to disastrous.
The Queen Mother is forced to make a choice and here Wilton demonstrates Elizabeth’s resolution of steel, which borders on cruelty. A Queen and a footman may be firm friends, but there can be no doubting where the real power lies.