If 17th-century Londoner Nell Gwynn is remembered today, it’s usually for the wrong reasons — as an orange seller who became mistress to England’s King Charles II. By rights, says British playwright Jessica Swale, Gwynn should be recalled as a trailblazing actress who dazzled her contemporaries with her smarts and bon mots.
Without money or education, Gwynn “became one of the most celebrated people in the country, through her wit and her intelligence and her spark,” Swale says, even though “few women at the time had much of a voice at all in terms of their public persona.”
It was in part to rectify the legend’s injustice that Swale wrote “Nell
Gwynn,” the comedy making its East Coast premiere Tuesday at the Folger Theatre. Part brainily bantering backstage drama, part zinger-spiced artist’s biography, the play debuted at Shakespeare’s Globe in London in 2015. A subsequent West End run snagged the Olivier Award for best new comedy.
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