Lesley Nicol—aka Mrs. Patmore from the blockbuster TV series “Downton Abbey”—was the sort of solemn, shy, bespectacled child who looked like she was 50 in her first-grade picture. So Nicol recalls, pointing to a grade-school photo that proves it, in her one-woman-plus-a-pianist show “How the Hell Did I Get Here?,” now making its North American tour kick-off at the Greenhouse Theater Center.
For the non-Downtonites, Mrs. Patmore is the chief cook in the “upstairs/downstairs”-style series and subsequent movie about life on a post-Edwardian-era English estate. Mrs. Patmore serves as something of a moral, working-class conscience for the lavish drama—a salt-of-the-earth, maternal presence beloved by both servants and gentry alike.
