Theatre Review: The Queen Mother’s champagne-loving servant is the subject of the funniest West End play in years

Backstairs Billy
Duke of York’s Theatre, London, until January 27

In common with just about every diarist in London, I knew Billy “Backstairs” Tallon, the late Queen Mother’s loyal but slightly ridiculous factotum. After her death, when he was at a loss about what to do with himself, there could hardly have been a single party he didn’t attend. He lived on a diet of cheap champagne and canapés.

To his great credit, he always kept the royal household’s secrets, but he was a lot freer with his favours. At the opening night of Backstairs Billy, Marcelo Dos Santos’s new play inspired by his life, it was amusing hearing so many men – gay and straight – saying they had at one time or another been propositioned by him.

Luke Evans captures Tallon very well. At once unctuous to his majestic line manager, but also adroitly crossing the line from time to time to keep a vulnerable woman who was clearly prone to depression and pining after her husband as happy as she possibly could be. Tallon’s great redeeming feature was his charm and this is not an easy quality for an actor to communicate but it seems to come effortlessly to Evans.

As the Queen Mum, Penelope Wilton wisely doesn’t attempt to reproduce her voice, but focuses instead on the conflict within her of her awareness of her position but also her abhorrence of boredom and her own company. At one point, the pair dance together.

She seems vaguely complicit in Billy’s decision to spike the drinks of a dreary teetotal couple (Michael Simkins and Nicola Sloane) to try to liven a luncheon up a bit. There is an almost unbearable poignancy to a scene in which an elderly and dotty guest inquires if her husband is well.

These two exceptionally strong performances – top marks, too, to Ilan Galkoff who plays the young Billy – make for an evening of exceptional theatre. It’s rare these days to find anything in the West End that’s witty, intelligent, thought-provoking and quite so well acted, with good old-fashioned production values, but this succeeds admirably on all fronts.

Christopher Oram has created what amounts to a great playroom for the Queen Mum and Tallon in Buckingham Palace and Michael Grandage’s direction is as ever stylish and assured. Best of all, it made me laugh a lot. I’d say the funniest thing I have seen on stage since Michael Frayn’s Noises Off. The Queen Mother’s corgis – played by Pumpkin and Tring – are also very convincing.