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.
