Playhouse Creatures at Orange Tree Theatre review: this historical romp is bracing, heady fun

Life for London’s first professional actresses was punishingly hard, but their world is explored with wit, warmth and a wholly apt, heightened staginess in this revival of April de Angelis’s 1993 play. Viewed as sexual objects, at risk from lovers’ caprices and the encroachment of age, these characters – including the infamous Nell Gwyn and the renowned Mrs Betterton - nonetheless changed the face and the course of theatre. Two hours in their company is bracing, heady fun.

We’re at the King’s Men’s company, when women have only just replaced young boys in female roles on stage following the 1660 Restoration under Charles II. Anna Chancellor’s “Mrs B”, wife of actor-manager Thomas Betterton and long versed in rehearsing him and even going onstage in disguise if another actor was sick, queens it over her juniors. Whether playing the heroines of Shakespeare or Otway, she believes the head should be held at specific positions, as if on a clockface, for each emotion: “Despair: five past twelve.”