Alan Bennett’s brilliantly comic dissection of 18th century British politics and the monarchy is served well by this Nottingham Playhouse production , screened by the National Theatre as part of its lockdown series.
The “ madness” as we now know was a totally undiagnosed illness from which George recovered, and Bennett spares no chance to demonise the many doctors brought in by the Government to cure the king. They fail until Prime Minister Pitt finds a Lincolnshire ex-priest Willis ( Adrian Scarborough ) to take care of the monarch. Scarborough is fair, firm and a no-nonsense Northerner from the Bennett stable.
The king of course recovers and the other quacks are dismissed, with hefty payments.
That’s the plot – apart from the side-stories of the battle between Whig Opposition and Tory Government to control the Commons, and the dreadful Prince Regent’s soaring ambitions.
But it’s on George’s dreadful passage through his illness that Bennett concentrates. Mark Gatiss produces a masterful performance and is the good, sometimes too honest sovereign – charting his descent with an amazing amount of physical and verbal fireworks.
His anguish, pain and suffering are sometimes hard to watch, at the brutal hands of his physicians, but Gatiss still gets a fair quota of laughs out of the role , and there are some good jokes at the expense of our newly freed American cousins .
Christopher Luscombe directs with speed and clarity and the pace is never allowed to slow, moving swiftly between Windsor, Kew and Westminster.
It’s fascinating to realise as Bennett tells us, that the business of Government really was stymied by the indisposition of the king and his unwillingness and then inability to sign State papers on the Budget and other matters.
In the end, restored more or less to his normal self, the king shows wilfulness and a lack of gratitude and once more assumes his all-powerful role . It’s a bit of a sharp ending to an otherwise sympathetic look at a Lear-like figure who falls only to rise again.
The play is on the NT’s YouTube stream until Thursday 18 June – if you watch, don’t forget to donate to the NT or the Nottingham Playhouse.
Watch now here:
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