Brighton Year-Round 2026
Playhouse Creatures
New Venture Theatre, Brighton
Genre: Biographical Drama, Costume, Dark Comedy, Drama, Historical, Live Music, Theatre
Venue: New Venture Theatre Studio
Festival: Brighton Year-Round
Low Down
“Before this place turned playhouse it was a bear pit… He took my hand and put it in the blood… ‘She dances and we eat meat.’” Dresser Doll Common stares out, recalling her father. April de Angelis’ 1993 Playhouse Creatures directed by Gaby Bowring plays at New Venture’s Studio till April 25.
This version is never done because the all-female five-hander is easier: so do see it. A triumph.
Review
“Before this place turned playhouse it was a bear pit… He took my hand and put it in the blood… ‘She dances and we eat meat.’” Dresser Doll Common stares out, recalling her father. April de Angelis’ 1993 Playhouse Creatures directed by Gaby Bowring plays at New Venture’s Studio till April 25.
For six women, it’s moot whether the pit ever made the transition: baying crowds, hired bravos smearing excrement on anyone flinging back an earl’s drunken insult, are prodding for bear dances. This is the third production I’ve seen, and as good as any. Bowring opts unusually for the expanded 1997 Old Vic version with eight, not five characters. It works even better – how could we not have Elizabeth Barry?
Now a seven-hander portraying over two-hours-twenty the lives of five famous women actors of Restoration is neatly plotted and as one – Nell Gwyn’s – fortunes rise, each of the others is challenged. There’s a touch of O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh. Sarah Donnelly as Mrs Betterton, wife of the actor-manager, leads a superb cast. Donnelly has impressed in everything, most recently Jerusalem. This might be her finest performance yet.
Though with Playhouse Creatures the writer of A Laughing Matter and The Divine Mrs S. left a stage-door open for Jessica Swayle’s 2015 Nell Gwyn at the Globe, de Angelis always showed more interest in period theatre-houses and collective struggle. Pressures facing women’s new-found autonomy and expression twinned with denigration as sexual objects and prostitutes. Perils of pregnancy and destitution beckon too as flipside to a trip up a royal or noble backstairs, with status as a kept woman. And… women shareholders?
Tensions spark between old guard and new, benefits the younger bring with fresh ideas. And between male and female actors: Men act forever; but don’t think women should. Retiring from the stage often meant 21. Gwyn knows it’s seizing your moment. “I always get what I want.” Careful… De Angelis dovetails anachronisms to bring characters together: I won’t detail them. It hardly matters. The loudest howler involving dramatist Vanbrugh (born 1664!) has gone.
Gwyn (quip-smart, effervescent Zarrina Danaeva) spies shy Elizabeth Farley reprising her preacher father, advises her to join the theatre. Danaeva’s song-and-dance burns through Gwyn’s ad-libs. Farley tricks Gwyn, getting in first, but Gwyn blags her way in and with dancing and improv-quips, we believe a star is born. Farley’s first to the king’s favour. Though faced with dilemmas leading to an excoriating scene with her peers. An exquisitely poised Holly Morran making her NVT debut brings the scorn of the carefully-bred to Farley, doesn’t hold back disdain. All awkwardness then professional hauteur, Morran’s transition from gawky Puritan to classy to elsewhere arcs accent and descent.
Mrs Rebecca Marshall (Amelia Leigh), foul-mouthed like Gwyn but middle-class, more angry, seeks revenge as actresses turn witchy, enacting outtakes from The Crucible. Might the Earl of Oxford seek revenge? Leigh’s wired and (like Morran) elegant Marshall blazes as the new professional wanting nothing but theatre. Leigh’s always impressed – often in period roles. She brings new depths here. Marshall and Gwynn aspire to be shareholders. Mrs Betterton seizes her chance.
Jack Morris’s truculence is haunted, as dresser Doll Common (modelled on real Katherine Corey playing in Jonson’s Alchemist). Devoted but devoid of illusion, she’s moving recalling Mrs Betterton’s greatness. Morris relishes narrative witness: “I mend their costumes, clean their mess. Girls come and go – bright as fire, gone as quick. The theatre eats you alive. But me? I’m still here, holding the fort while they chase glory.”
Thomas Dee’s self-involved dramatist Thomas Otway is droll with four-hour-and-a quarter masterpieces. “You may need it, but we don’t” Donnelly tells him. By the time he’s got it right the actress for whom it was written has quit, pursued by an earl. It’s cleverly worked-in by de Angelis and amplifies the play. Later as roguish but brilliant Rochester Dee schools Amelia Jackson (who briefly appeared as Wit with Otway) as Elizabeth Barry: ultimately the most famous actress of all.
Dee and Jackson work as a duet away from the others, apart from when he’s Otway. Dee’s characters add history, a male agon. Jackson brings to her role an adamantine certainty, a cool lucid exaltation. Warmth comes when Nell does. Again a fine scene we miss in the original.
Donnelly is though a sun-like Mrs Betterton round whom the production revolves, bartering with her husband – who demands the unexpected. Or mentoring young Gwyn with gestural clock-faces. Donnelly’s rapt, recalling salad days: substituting for Iago or Hal when actresses were still forbidden. Donnelly’s speech as distracted Lady Macbeth caps the evening. Dropping the stylised 1660s, she delivers a revolutionary naturalism to Doll Common: who wonders if Betterton’s mad. You want to see her play the full part. Donnelly’s final “I never missed a cue” is heartbreak flicked casually. As actors peel off Gwyn and Common are left in the deserted theatre; but Gwyn can’t resist an epilogue. We get two. When Doll Common claims “Life’s like a storm. Don’t get in its way” it honours the stoicism of those in the eye of it, and their audience.
Bowring and Simon Glazier’s set is classic Studio 45-degree raised stage with red curtains, benches, chaise-long and props to foreground it all. Ewan Cassidy’s lighting includes candles.
A costume supervision team launches quick-change coups. Best are two black-clad women attired as men, mutually attracted after a magnificent, extended sword-fight: Chris Connah’s fight direction scintillates but huge credit to Leigh and Danaeva who truly clash, lock and parry: there were gasps. It harks back to John Lyly’s gender-fluid Galatea and a moment that might have been explored. Connah’s movement is fluid too as actors wheel on a speech. Ian Black’s period sound includes noises off.
“She dances and we eat meat.” Doll Common’s bearpit and baiters never left. This version is never done because the all-female five-hander is easier: so do see it. A triumph.
Production Manager Ian Black, Stage Manager, Moon Berglind, ASMs Carol Croft, Ayshen Irfan, Elaine Larkin, Anne-Marie Harrison
Costumes supplied by Gladrags & Wick Theatre Company
Hair & Make-Up Rich Blennerhassett & Laura Scobie
Dressers Mary Weaver, Marion Dean, Bo Svilvagyi, Lulu Belle Harrington, Matilda Kundke, Natalya Hickey, Margaret Parkes, Janine Geater-Davis, vie Dixon & Hannah Seers
Set Design Gaby Bowring & Simon Glazier
Set Build & Painting Simon Glazier, Ally McDermott, Chris Tew, Lulu Belle Harrington, Wiktoria Piatowska & Pete Ranson
Lighting Designer Ewan Cassidy, Lighting Rigging Ewan Cassidy, Peter Meekings & Liam O’Sullivan
Sound Designer Ian Black, Sound Operator Ian Black & Christine Hauschild, Props Carrie Hynds
Poster & Programme Designer Tamsin Mastoris
Publicity/Headshot Photography Strat Mastoris
Publicity& Social Media Elysa Hyde
Health and Safety Ian Black.
Stage Combat Training & Choreography Chris Connah
Thanks to Katie Brownings, Elaine Larkin, Chris Connah for superb sword-fight training, and choreography, Vania and Idgie and team at Gladrags, Jackie Jones for costume alterations, Margaret Parkes for stage curtain alterations, Maggie Piece of Wick Theatre Company and Samantha Howard for lending additional costumes. And FOH.
