In Restoration England, Nell Gwynne became the most famous woman alive.
Our play which might have been sub-titled Carry On Up the Restoration! tries to show you why. Funny. Sad. Belting songs.
Theatre is all about storytelling. Folk music is all about storytelling. And Nell Gwynne – what a story. Born into poverty (her mum ran a brothel and her dad died in a debtors’ gaol) the young Nelly was a cinder girl, a fish hawker, an orange seller but became the leading comedy actress of her day.
She is perhaps best known to history as the mistress of Charles II. But is really known to us because she was funny. Samuel Pepys called her “pretty witty Nell”. Playwrights, poets and politicians – the sharpest minds courted her and were part of her “merry gang”.
We’ve songs written by Jo Freya, Robb Johnson, Reg Meuross, Lucy Ward, Boff Whalley and Winter Wilson.
And 350 years on, what’s changed? A plague. A corrupt government. A dodgy duke of York. Ahem.
