Backstairs Billy starring Penelope Wilton & Luke Evans – Reviews

"Penelope Wilton makes a marvellous Queen Mother in the best royal drama in a decade"

"This play about the late Queen Mother's relationship with her steward is the best way to honour the royal's undersung life"

"Backstairs Billy is the best new play about the royals since Peter Morgan’s smash-hit The Audience."

"Abounding with witty entertainment and curiosity value, augmented by scene-stealing appearances from two real-life corgis, it confirms the promise shown by Marcelo Dos Santos with his comic monologue Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going to Happen (seen in Edinburgh, now running at the Bush)"

"Impeccably directed by Michael Grandage (with an opulent evocation of the Clarence House Garden Room from Christopher Oram) – the evening is at its most persuasive early on, luxuriating in a comedy of awkward manners."

"If credulity becomes enjoyably strained, Penelope Wilton’s performance as the Queen Mother consistently rivets, down to the smallest conversational tic: quietly watchful, concertedly genial, lusty for diversion from a solitary fretfulness and knowing when to pull rank, she combines dignity and mischief in ways that honour the original’s eccentric liveliness and rather undersung life."

"Penelope Wilton shines in a royal farce"

"This fictional account of the friendship between the Queen Mother and her favourite aide, William Tallon, plays like a cross between The Crown and X-rated PG Wodehouse. Penelope Wilton is on witty, dignified form as the Queen Mother, while as Tallon (“Billy”) Luke Evans delivers a performance that tilts between perfectionism and outrage as he choreographs everything from cocktails to corgis."

"Michael Grandage’s pacy production begins like a ballet as Evans’s Billy whirls onto Christopher Oram’s elaborate set"

"Where Dos Santos’s writing really works is when he imagines the moving connection between Billy as a young gay working-class boy and his employer, for whom he starts working when she is freshly bereaved."

"The shift between farce and the more nuanced drama can be jarring. Yet overall Grandage’s production executes itself as nimbly as clockwork, delivering plenty of laughs along with the live corgis."

"Penelope Wilton and Luke Evans star in this unexpectedly hard-hitting comedy-drama about the Queen Mother and her long-term steward, William Tallon"

"Marcelo Dos Santos’s ‘Backstairs Billy’ is that rare thing: a new play that’s debuted straight into the West End (as opposed to transferred in from somewhere smaller). It’s thanks to the clout of its director, Michael Grandage, and his charity MGCFutures, which supports the next generation of creatives."

"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."

"As Billy, Evans is archly funny; a Royal Family devotee who has hollowed out his own life in service."

"But it’s Wilton who owns the stage. She brings a dazed, distracted quality to the Queen Mother that acts as a smokescreen for papercut cruelty delivered with a benign smile. She and Evans establish a playful rapport. But this isn’t a straightforwardly heartwarming story – Billy is as much a plaything as anything. The Queen Mother’s blessing comes with conditions."

"This whimsical royal comedy makes The Crown look too careful"

"Real corgis, acid putdowns and a regal performance from Penelope Wilton make Marcelo Dos Santos’s play about the Queen Mother and her loyal servant William Tallon an early festive delight"

"Even by the standards of the theatrical silly season that accompanies the advent of Christmas, Backstairs Billy is a thoroughly frivolous thing. Penelope Wilton delights in the central role of the Queen Mother, imperiously bossing about her butler Billy in a comedy that’s as whimsical as the beaded, veiled hats atop her head. Still, there’s a ticking brain underneath this particular confection, with writer Marcelo Dos Santos using the real-life story of royal servant William Tallon to explore the hidden 1970s gay history below stairs at Clarence House."

"Wilton is both convincing and hilarious as the more official of the two queens: brisk, easily bored, and always ready with an acid putdown ("Just as well Billy cleaned the carpets this morning," she quips, as two Home Counties visitors grovel embarrassingly before her)."

"It’s only in the more ambitious second act that Dos Santos tries to seriously critique the monarchy, instead of lightly tickling its imperiously raised chin."

"This Clarence House is a gay paradise, but it’s also a hellscape, and Backstairs Billy is at its strongest when it brings its twisted dynamics to life. Still, even in its fluffiest moments, it’s altogether enjoyable: a cheeky riposte to The Crown‘s carefully reverential approach to the royal family, made to brighten festive nights."

"Penelope Wilton makes a magnificent Queen Mother"

"The Downton Abbey actor’s performance in Michael Grandage’s production is a gift for all who admire superlative acting"

"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."

"He is camp and chirpy in Evans’s bouncy performance, which relishes the sharp wit of Marcelo Dos Santos’s script."

"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."

"Comic royal cocktail with a splash of spice"

"Marcelo Dos Santos’s Backstairs Billy - a gay old royal romp - made me chortle a lot. True, it would be infinitely poorer without Penelope Wilton, on twinkling form as the Queen Mum. She’s ginny, vague and desperate for some fun."

"Emily Barber memorably doubles up as a sitcom actress and a bonkers aristo. But my abiding memory is of the QM serenely holding a dildo-shaped sculpture made by a fake African prince. It’s all just froth - but there’s a dash of bitters at the end to keep this comic cocktail from cloying."

"Backstairs Billy is a droll portrait of a curious royal relationship"

"This stuffy Clarence House interior, with its stifling decor and labyrinthine rules, is both a haven and a gilded cage to the two characters: their mutual understanding of that sustains their curious, decades-long relationship. Dos Santos’s play, set largely in 1979, is at its touching best when it sticks close to that strange, uneven friendship."

"Wilton and Evans are superb... Wilton, meanwhile, is a joy: beneath soft pastel chiffon, she suggests a tough, shrewd mind, but also a sense of suppressed rage and hurt at her sudden loss of power and purpose."

"The play’s high comic tone sits at odds with the social concerns that Dos Santos seeks to tackle: industrial unrest, economic hardship, the rise of Margaret Thatcher."

"But even if it can’t pull everything together, it’s still bubblingly witty. Michael Grandage directs with silken expertise, Christopher Oram’s design is opulent, there are many great one-liners, real corgis — and Evans and Wilton reign supreme."

"More fizz than a royal reception, but what's it saying?"

"At times, this play about the relationship between the Queen Mother and her favourite servant doesn't quite know where to go"

"A deliciously frothy West End entertainment about the late Queen Mother’s conspiratorial relationship with her gay factotum Billy Tallon becomes something much stranger in the second half. Marcelo Dos Santos’s play is about two figures striving for relevance, and chafing against the social strictures they revere. Yet having brought them into sharp focus, he seems uncertain what to do with them."

"Michael Grandage’s production features a delicately witty performance of floaty, unworldly privilege from Penelope Wilton – slightly off her words, not helped by having to wrangle a recalcitrant corgi at one point. As Billy, Luke Evans is a rogue with a ramrod back and Feargal Sharkey’s hair, a stickler for propriety when it suits him, a mischievous rule-breaker when it doesn’t."

"Grandage’s production is consistently funny, and the performances entertain, but this play really doesn’t know what it’s saying."

"Flawless performances from Penelope Wilton and Luke Evans"

"New comedy starring Penelope Wilton and Luke Evans is elegantly executed but frustratingly toothless"

"It’s amusing, and toys gingerly with social issues, among them the peculiarly British business of class divide and deference. Yet it never properly alights on any particular sense of purpose. Even in Michael Grandage’s supremely accomplished production, with flawless performances from Penelope Wilton and Luke Evans and a couple of real corgis scampering about, it is toothless."

"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."

"Anodyne comedy about the Queen Mother and her servant"

"Penelope Wilton plays the isolated royal and Luke Evans is her courtier in a light production that never gains much depth"

"... if it sounds like a drama akin to Queen Victoria’s cross-class friendship with John Brown, this new play starring Penelope Wilton and Luke Evans is not quite as deep or meaningful as that."

"There are two “queens” here, or so the repeated joke goes, along with double entendres on “hung” that might have made Larry Grayson wince."

"Evans is lovably roguish and charming while Wilton would not look out of place in The Crown. The rest of the cast play below-stairs comic types"

"The writing has sophistication and some jokes are funny but this is the epitome of theatre as light entertainment. A worshipful approach to the Queen Mother means the play is so careful not to offend that it ends up anodyne"