Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.“Once this was a playhouse,” declares Doña Croll’s Doll Common, conspiratorially, at the start of April De Angelis’s Playhouse Creatures. It draws a ripple of laughter from the audience and instantly sets the tone for this mischievous, highly enjoyable 1993 comedy about the pioneering actresses of the Restoration.Throughout, De Angelis cannily reminds us that we are in a theatre and that the all-female company we are watching stand on the shoulders of Doll Common, Nell Gwyn, Mrs Betterton and their like. And while the tone is light (and often bawdy), with De Angelis taking her cue from the popular comedies of the period, the play is soon spiked with darker issues, many of which are still with us. Director Michael Oakley and a fine ensemble bring all this to sparkling life, relishing the intimate confines of the Orange Tree and the chance to rip into some of the riper styles of acting from yesteryear.We start, then, with optimism. It’s the early 1660s, Charles II has reopened the playhouses, and for the first time in English history, that means jobs for the girls. Nell Gwyn — bright-eyed and quick-witted in Zoe Brough’s portrayal — spots a chance to claw her way out of poverty and put the sales technique she learned selling oysters to good use. Soon she has parlayed her way into a theatre company where, alongside four other actresses, she will hone her craft, all the while grappling with the difficulties of being a woman on the stage: money, sexism, harassment, ageing.Around her, Katherine Kingsley’s funny, feisty Mrs Marshall (all the actresses, married or not, take the title “Mrs” for respectability’s sake) rages at her poor treatment at the hands of a faithless earl, who hurls insults — and worse — at her from the audience. Mrs Farley (Nicole Sawyerr) struts importantly as she is taken on as the king’s mistress, only to suffer a terrible downfall. Croll’s wry, watchful Katherine Corey (whose nickname “Doll Common” refers to a Ben Jonson character) offers pragmatic advice, but she is quietly committed to the cause and essential to the company, mending costumes, playing corpses and helping the leads learn their lines.At the heart of events is Anna Chancellor’s Mrs Betterton, wife of the leading man (who, ironically, we never see). Chancellor is excellent, delighting in the sort of wafting and gesticulating that might have accompanied 17th-century performance. But she also draws out the deep frustration of an intelligent woman, dedicated to her art. She must always play second fiddle to her husband, never gets to play the very meatiest of roles and sees even what is available to her — Lady Macbeth, Cleopatra — drift from her grasp as age obliges her to play a series of merry widows and servants. It’s a lovely, deftly modulated performance.At under two hours, the play feels a little crammed with incident, with some issues feeling ticked off, rather than explored in depth. An unwanted pregnancy and its tragic aftermath, for instance, are dealt with in too much of a hurry. But this is a rich and absorbing drama, and the fine, playful cast do their forebears credit.★★★★☆To April 12, orangetreetheatre.co.uk
