'She was very nice, charming really'

JEFFREY DAVIES talks to acting royalty, Anne Reid, about playing royalty, our late Queen, in a new play about the former monarch's life told through her wardrobe and style, which has its world premiere at the Theatre Royal in Bath next week

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A NEW play exploring the relationship between Queen Elizabeth II and her Dresser, and how the pair created the public image of the world's longest reigning monarch, has its world premiere in Bath next week.

After opening at the Theatre Royal, Daisy Goodwin's By Royal Appointment will tour to Cheltenham, Leeds, Malvern and Guildford.

The late Queen Elizabeth II was famous for her discretion. She never said anything in public that could ruffle the lightest of feathers. But she had one way of expressing what she really thought. Through her wardrobe.

By Royal Appointment is a funny, poignant and celebratory play about the kind of power that only the Queen can wield - she charms the world through coats, and admonishes her family through a carefully chosen hat.

But the Queen herself is uninterested in fashion, her look is managed by her Designer, her Milliner and, most powerful of all, her Dresser who was a working-class girl who goes from advising the Queen on the colour of her lipstick, to the real power behind the throne. But the Dresser, like all royal favourites, is living on borrowed time.

Directed by the former artistic director of Shakespeare's Globe, Dominic Dromgoole, and starring national treasure Anne Reid as the Queen, doyenne of stage and screen Caroline Quentin as The Dresser, Olivier Award-winning James Dreyfus as The Milliner, and Merchant Ivory and Poldark actor James Wilby as The Designer, By Royal Appointment is a behind-the-scenes peek into the world of our most popular monarch and the image she presented to the world.

Queen Elizabeth II. Our much-loved late Queen. What a wonderful role to play, I remarked to Anne Reid during a break in rehearsals.

"I know. I've always wanted to have a go at it Jeffrey. It was an ambition of mine," the welcoming and friendly Newcastle-upon-Tyne born-actress told me enthusiastically.